LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 


FROM  WALTER   MAP 
TO  RICHARD  WAGNER 


BY 

J.  S.  TUNISON 

Author  of  "  Master  Virgil"  and  "The  Sapphic  Stanza" 


CINCINNATI 

THE  ROBERT  CLARKE  COMPANY 
1904 


Copyright,  1904,  by 
THE  ROBERT  CLARKE  COMPANY. 


PRESS  OF  THE  ROBERT  CLARKK  CO. 
CINCINNATI,   U.    S.   A. 


What  is  it? 
The  phantom  of  a  cup  that  comes  and  goes  ? 


Was  I  too  dark  a  prophet  when  1  said 
To  those  who  went  upon  the  Holy  Quest, 
That  most  of  them  would  follow  wandering  fires 
Lost  in  the  quagmire? 


PREFACE 

Brevity  has  been  zealously  aimed  at  in  the 
pages  that  follow.  To  have  added  transla- 
tions and  abstracts  and  detailed  analysis  of 
the  Arthurian  romances  to  what  in  that  kind 
is  already  existent  and  readily  accessible  for 
all  who  wish  to  investigate  the  subject,  would 
be  a  mere  impertinence  in  a  writer  whose 
qualifications  for  the  task  here  essayed  are 
those  of  a  critic  and  medievalist,  and  not 
those  of  a  folk-lorist  or  interpreter.  The  at- 
tempt is  made  to  deal  solely  with  the  diffi- 
culties of  a  literary  cycle,  and  the  merits  of 
the  solution  are  left  to  the  acuteness  and 
penetration  of  readers. 

As  to  the  use  of  the  orthography  graal  in 
place  of  the  conventional  grail,  nothing  more 
can  be  said  than  that  the  former  is  historically 
the  earlier  form,  and  the  one  which  indicates 
clearly  the  derivation  of  the  tales  in  which  it 

(v) 


PREFACE 

figures.  If  one  were  writing  an  essay  on 
Tennyson's  poems,  the  spelling  grail  would 
be  sufficiently  accurate;  but  in  a  field  of  in- 
vestigation where  Tennyson  apparently  never 
ventured,  the  usage  which  he  sanctioned  may 
justly  be  neglected,  if  good  reasons  can  be 
given  for  the  deviation. 

In  stopping  short  with  the  consideration 
of  Wagner's  drama  as  literature,  leaving  the 
discussion  of  his  music  untouched,  the  dic- 
tates have  been  followed  of  both  necessity  and 
reason  —  necessity,  through  lack  of  requisite 
musical  learning;  reason,  because  it  is  only  as 
a  poet  that  Wagner  can  be  compared  with  his 
predecessors. 

The  author's  thanks  are  due  to  Frank  E. 
jTunison,  of  The  Dayton  Journal,  for  timely 
suggestions  and  for  efficient  aid  in  reading 

the  proofs  of  this  book. 

J.  S.  TUNISON. 
BETA  THETA  Pi  ROOMS, 

CINCINNATI,  January,  1904. 

(vi) 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PREFACE  v 

I.    A  NEGLECTED  POINT  OF  VIEW i 

II.    THE  ROUND  TABLE 7 

III.  HENRY  THE  SECOND 18 

IV.  THE  ENVIRONMENT 31 

V.    BERENGAR  OF  TOURS 51 

VI.  THE  REAL  PRESENCE 55 

VII.  WALTER  MAP 65 

VIII.  WOLFRAM  VON  ESCHENBACH 75 

IX.  WOLFRAM  AND  WAG-NKR 79 

X.  THE  GRAAL 89 

XL  FLEGETANIS 101 

XII.  WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM no 

INDEX  121 

(vii) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 


A  NEGLECTED  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Current  agitation  on  the  subject  of  Rich- 
ard Wagner's  Parsifal  prompts  a  discussion 
of  the  entire  Graal  motive  in  fiction,  mediaeval 
and  modern,  from  a  new  point  of  view.  The 
Arthurian  romances  have  been  analyzed  sci- 
entifically as  folklore,1  in  a  literary  way  with 


I.  See  WECHSLER,  Sage  von  der  Heil.  Gral;  HAGEN, 
Parzival-Studien;  BiRCH-HiRSCHFEU),  Die  Sage  vom 
Gral,  ihre  Entwickelung  in  Franckreich  und  Deutsch- 
land,  etc.  Allusions  in  FISKE,  Myths  and  Mythmakers; 
CLOUSTON,  Popular  Tales  and  Fictions;  LIEBRECHT,  Ger- 
vase  of  Tilbury's  Otia  Imperialia;  WRIGHT,  St.  Patrick's 
Purgatory;  and  many  others,  but  especially  Sir  GEORGE 
Cox,  The  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations. 

(I) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

reference  to  their  beauty  as  works  of  art,2 
aesthetically  with  an  eye  to  plastic  represen- 
tation,3 critically  in  respect  to  their  racial 
origin;4  but  hardly,  if  at  all,  in  the  light  of 
the  environment  that  surrounded  the  men 
who  are  supposed  to  have  written  them. 
This  last  would  be  the  very  first  thing  to  be 
considered  in  the  case  of  modern  fiction. 
Scott's  great  series  of  novels  can  be  viewed 
solely  as  a  collection  of  more  or  less  ancient 


2.  Almost   any  collection  of  essays   on   Tennyson 
illustrates  this  point.     See  also  introductions  to  various 
editions  of  Sir  Thomas   Malory  and  criticisms  of  the 
book  that  goes  by  his  name. 

3.  Vide    Abbey's    mural    paintings    in    the    Boston 
Public  Library  and  the  critical  writings  thereby  inspired. 

4.  ALFRED  Nurr,  Studies  on  the  Legend  of  the  Holy 
Grail,  and,  The  Legends  of  the  Holy  Grail;  HEINZEL, 
Die  Framosischen  Gral-romane;  WECHSLER,  Die  Ver- 
schiedenen    Redaktionen    der    Graal-Lancelot    Cyklus; 
LICHTENSTEIN,  Zur  Parzival  Frage;  WAITZ,  Die  Fort- 
setzungen  von  Crestien's  Perceval  le  Gallois;  NITZE,  The 
Old  French  Grail  Romance  of  Perlesvaus;  RHYS,  The 
Arthurian  Legend;  KRAUSSOLD,  Die  Sage  vom  Heilgen 
Gral  und  Parceval;  BERGMANN,  The  San  Greal,  etc. 

(2) 


A  NEGLECTED  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Scottish  legend  and  tradition.  They  can  be, 
and  they  have  been,  discussed  to  weariness, 
with  reference  to  their  literary  merits.  But 
the  man  Scott,  in  his  historic  place,  with  the 
influences,  moral,  social,  religious,  literary, 
political,  professional,  to  which  he  was  sub- 
ject, looms  large  in  all  comments  upon  his 
work,  and  most  frequently  the  critics  are  so 
engrossed  with  him  and  his  circumstances  as 
to  give  the  impression  of  unity  to  his  mass 
of  fiction  which  it  would  never  give  to  any 
reader  on  its  own  account. 

An  example,  even  more  noteworthy,  of 
the  importance  of  environment  is  that  of 
Wagner  himself,  particularly  because  of  what 
is  known  of  the  stages  of  development  in  the 
composition  of  this  play  of  Parsifal.  It  is 
well  known  that  he  meditated  a  music  drama, 
first  with  Jesus,  then  with  Buddha,  as  the 
central  figure,  years  before  the  device  of  the 
Graal  occurred  to  him. 
(3) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

If  the  dates  of  his  experiments  are  exam- 
ined, it  will  be  found  that  his  inceptive  Jesus 
play  was  conceived  in  the  midst  of  that  ration- 
alistic disturbance  in  Germany,  marked  to  the 
popular  mind  by  Strauss's  Life  of  Jesus.5  This 
work  was  first  published  in  1835;  but  the 
movement  of  which  it  was  an  index  hardly 
reached  its  maximum  before  the  middle  of 
the  century.  Kenan's  Vie  de  Jesus,  obviously 
a  product  of  the  movement  somewhat  belated 
in  its  transit  from  one  nation  to  another,  was 
issued  in  1863.  Thus  Wagner,  busy  with  a 
Jesus  play  in  1848,  was  alert  to  the  new 
thought  at  its  climax. 

The  inchoate  Buddha  play  belongs  to  the 
time  when  Schopenhauer's  magnum  opus,  The 
World  as  Will  and  Idea,  neglected  for  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  began,  at  its  second  pub- 


5.  KREHBIEL,  Studies  in  the  Wagnerian  Drama, 
p.  163.  A  significant  reminiscence  of  Frau  Wille  is 
quoted  by  FINCK,  Wagner  and  His  Works,  II.,  p.  399. 

(4) 


A  NEGLECTED  POINT  OF  VIEW 

lication,  to  affect  the  thought  of  Europe.6 
Though  the  second  edition  appeared  in  1844, 
it  was  much  later  in  reaching  its  final  success. 
Speaking  of  Herbart  and  Schopenhauer  to- 
gether and  in  contrast,  Erdmann  explains 
elaborately  why,  under  the  shadow  of  Hegel, 
"  the  period  of  deserved  recognition  could 
first  come  to  the  two  only  a  short  time  be- 
fore their  death."  Schopenhauer  died  in 
1860.  The  date,  then,  of  1856  for  Wagner's 
Buddha  play  is  coincident  with  the  triumph 
of  the  philosopher  he  admired. 

Finally  the  Parsifal  complete  was  worked 
out  under  the  patronage  of  a  Catholic  mon- 
arch, and  in  the  heart  of  a  Catholic  commu- 
nity,7 where  mediaeval  ideas  were  still  vital, 
and,  one  may  say,  rampant.  No  doubt  the 
ascetic  reaction  in  the  writings  of  Schopen- 


6.  ERDMANN,  History  of  Philosophy,  English  trans- 
lation, II.,  p.  608. 

7.  Wagner's  own  date   for  the  beginning  of  this 
work  is  the  spring  of  1865. 

(5) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

hauer  against  fat,  prosperous,  well-fed,  well- 
married  German  Protestantism  8  had  its  effect 
in  turning  Wagner  to  the  Catholic  ideal  of 
Christian  life,  but  his  almost  abnormal  self- 
consciousness  made  him  peculiarly  sensitive 
to  the  atmosphere  about  him,  and  the  atmos- 
phere of  Bavaria  was  adapted  above  all  to  the 
creation  of  Parsifal. 

Thus,  aside  from  the  genius  of  the  poet- 
composer,  one  may  say  that  the  drama  of 
Parsifal,  in  its  gradual  evolution,  through 
years  of  cogitation  and  experiment,  was  the 
result  of  German  rationalism,  of  Schopen- 
hauer's pessimistic  philosophy,  and  of  a  Cath- 
olic reaction  in  a  mind  which  had  been  highly 
revolutionary. 

8.  "Protestantism,  since  it  has  eliminated  asceticism 
and  its  central  point,  the  meritoriousness  of  celibacy,  has 
already  given  up  the  inmost  kernel  of  Christianity.  .  .  . 
It  seems  to  me  that  Catholicism  is  a  shamefully  abused, 
but  Protestantism  a  degenerate,  Christianity;  thus  that 
Christianity  in  general  has  met  the  fate  which  befalls  all 
that  is  noble,  sublime  and  great  whenever  it  has  to  dwell 
among  men."  SCHOPENHAUER,  The  World  as  Will  and 
Idea,  Engl.  Transl.,  III.,  pp.  447.  449- 
(6) 


II 

THE  ROUND  TABLE 

It  can  not  be  hoped  at  this  late  day  to 
restore  the  personality  and  surroundings  of 
the  two  or  at  most  three  men  who  created, 
in  a  literary  sense,  the  Arthur  legends.  But 
enough  can  be  done  to  show  that  the  narra- 
tives came  into  being  with  as  distinct  a  pur- 
pose as  that  evident  in  Wagner's  Parsifal,  or 
in  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King,  as  expressed 
in  the  Dedication  to  the  memory  of  Prince 
Albert  — 

These  to  His  Memory — since  he  held  them  dear 
Perchance  as  finding  there  unconsciously 
Some  image  of  himself — I  dedicate, 
I  dedicate,  I  consecrate  with  tears — 
These  Idylls; 

(7) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

or  more  lightly  in  the  lines  that  accompanied 
the  Morte  d' Arthur  as  published  in  1842  — 

To  me,  methought,  who  waited  with  a  crowd, 
There  came  a  bark,  that,  blowing  forward,  bore 
King  Arthur,  like  a  modern  gentleman 
Of  stateliest  port;  and  all  the  people  cried, 
1 '  Arthur  is  come  again  :  he  cannot  die." 

Recurring  to  the  case  of  Scott,  one  is  con- 
fronted at  the  outset  with  an  important  fact, 
namely,  that  while  the  material  which  he 
gathered  into  his  novels  was  mostly  derived 
from  his  own  country,  his  literary  method  was 
merely  an  improvement  on  a  German  inven- 
tion which  had  been  in  use  for  many  years, 
and  which  culminated  in  a  book  very  familiar 
to  him,  Goethe's  Goetz  von  Berlichingen.1  Pre- 
cisely this  thing  happened  also  to  the  authors 


i.  Beginning,  according  to  WILSON'S  DUNLOP,  His- 
tory of  Prose  Fiction,  with  Frau  Naubert,  and  proceed- 
ing to  Goethe's  time  in  the  works  of  Meissner,  Fessler, 
Schlenkert  and  others.  Compare  Carlyle's  reference  to 
Gotz  with  the  Iron  Hand  in  his  review  of  LOCKHART'S 
Life  of  Scott. 

(8) 


THE  ROUND  TABLE 

of  Arthurian  romance.  The  material  is  largely 
Celtic — that  is,  British,  Irish,  or  Armorican;2 
the  literary  form  was  suggested  by  familiarity 
with  the  Prankish  legends  of  Charlemagne 
and  his  paladins.3  It  should  always  be  kept 
in  mind  that  the  Pseudo-Turpin's  book  pre- 
ceded Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  by  at  least 
twenty  years,  and  Geoffrey  was  undoubtedly 
acquainted  with  it,  or  he  would  hardly  have 
committed  the  strange  anachronism  of  hav- 
ing Charlemagne's  Twelve  Peers  at  Arthur's 
coronation  in  Caerleon. 

The  special  feature  of  a  round  table  and  a 
military  order  associated  with  it  may  confi- 
dently be  set  down  as  a  loan  from  the  Byzan- 
tines. The  old  triclinium  of  the  Romans  was 


2.  See  the  works  of  RHYS  and  NUTT  in  particular 
on  this  point. 

3.  HAZLITT'S  WARTON,  History  of  English  Poetry, 
I.,  p.  108.     Geoffrey's  work  did  not  become  public  before 
1135.     The  Pseudo-Turpin  had  been  pronounced  genuine 
by  Pope  Calixtus  in  1122,  and  must  have  been  known  to 
readers  some  years  earlier. 

(9) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

replaced  early  in  the  times  of  the  empire,  upon 
the  importation  of  costly  woods  from  Africa, 
by  a  crescent-shaped  table,4  with  cushions  or 
stibadia  around  the  outer  edge,  while  the  inner 
curve  was  open  to  the  attendants.  Often  a 
small  round  table  was  set  in  the  opening,  and 
from  this  the  guests  were  served,  as  from  a 
modern  sideboard.  The  customs  of  Britain 
in  Arthur's  time  are  of  no  significance  in  Ar- 
thurian romance.  Nevertheless,  the  Romans 
must  have  had  tables  in  their  British  resi- 
dences similar  to  those  they  had  in  Italy. 
The  curved  table  was  sometimes  called  sigma, 
in  allusion  to  that  form  of  the  Greek  letter 
which  resembled  the  Latin  C.  The  com- 
plete semi-circle  was  a  later  invention,  and 
was  one  of  the  many  forms  of  table  used 
at  imperial  banquets  in  Constantinople.  The 


4.    An  illustration  of  this  kind  of  table  can  be  found 
in  LANCIANI,  Pagan  and  Christian  Rome,  p.  357.     This 
picture  shows  that  the  crescent-shaped  table  outlasted 
the  fashion  of  recumbency  at  meals. 
(10) 


THE  ROUND  TABLE 

emperor,  or  the  emperor  and  empress,  if  the 
latter  were  present,  sat  in  the  middle  of  the 
straight  side,  the  guests  around  the  curved 
side,  so  that  each  was  equally  distant  from  the 
place  of  honor.5  The  first  time  that  such  a 
table  was  used  in  the  west,  so  far  as  I  know, 
was  at  a  certain  highly  ceremonious  dinner 
given  by  Emperor  Otto  the  Third,  whose 
mother  was  a  Byzantine  princess,  to  his 
nobles  at  Quedlinburg8  toward  the  close  of 
the  tenth  century.  Otto's  arrogance  and  the 
great  number  of  his  guests  led  him  to  a  varia- 
tion which  destroyed  the  meaning  of  the 
Byzantine  custom  and  deeply  offended  his 


5.  It  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  some  dispute  as 
to  this,  but  all  the  probabilities  favor  the  position  taken 
in  the  text. 

6.  Imperator  antiquam  Romanorum  consuetudinem 
jam  ex  parte  magna  deletam,  suis  cupiens  renovare  tem- 
poribus,  multa  faciebat,  quae  diversi  diverse  accipiebant. 
Solus  ad  mensam  quasi  semicirculum  factum,  loco  caet- 
eris  eminentiori  sedebat.    DITMARUS,  Lib.  IV.,  LEIBNITZ, 
Scriptores  Rerum  Brunsvicensium,  I.,  p.  357. 

(ii) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM. 

court.  But  in  the  twelfth  century  the  thing 
was  thoroughly  understood,  as  may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  description  of  a  royal  feast 
which  Walter  Map  7  —  a  man  of  mark  in  the 
history  of  Arthur  romances  —  gives  in  one  of 
his  Latin  stories.  A  complete  circle  would 
have  been  rejected  by  the  Greek  emperor 
because  it  gave  him  no  distinction.  The 
thing  is  so  impracticable  under  any  rules  of 
mediaeval  manners  that  have  ever  been  dis- 
covered or  even  imagined,  that  Wagner  in 
the  performance  of  Parsifal 8  replaced  it  with 
two  semi-circular  tables,  and  it  remains  to  be 
proved  that  the  Arthur  romances  alluded  to 
more  than  the  historic  half-circle.  By  any 
other  contrivance  the  King  either  took  rank 


7.  Erat    autem    hemiciclum    immensum    regi    pro 
mensa  regique  sedes  in  centre,  quatinus  eliminate  livore 
in  hemiciclo  sedentes  regiae  sedis  essent  omnes  aequaliter 
proximi,  ne  quisquam  posset  de  sua  remotione  dolere 
nee   de  vicinia  gloriari.     WRIGHT'S   MAPES,  De  Nugis 
Curialium,  p..  113. 

8.  FINCK,  op.  cit.  II..  p.  418. 

(12) 


THE  ROUND  TABLE 

with  his  subjects  or  turned  his  back  on  half 
his  guests.  Posidonius,9  it  is  true,  says  that 
the  ancient  Celts,  when  numerous  at  a  feast, 
were  accustomed  to  sit  in  a  circle,  with  the 
man  in  the  centre  most  notable  in  arms,  de- 
scent or  riches.  But  this  relates  to  a  time 
when  these  barbarians  had  no  tables. 

The  first  historic  notice  of  a  round-table 
military  order  is  that  of  Cassiodorus 10  re- 
specting Theodoric,  the  Ostrogothic  King  of 
Italy,  and  Theodoric's  frank  acceptance  of 
everything  Byzantine  n  which  did  not  inter- 


9.  ATHEN^US,     Deipnosoph.^  quoted   by   Wilson: 
"Orav  61  irfaiovef  awdeiTrvaaav  K.ddrfVTa.1,  fi£v  ev  Kt'/c/lcj,  /j.eaof  6£ 
6  Kp&TtaTOf  <5f  av  Kopw^aZof  %opov  6ia<j>tpuv  TUV  aTJwv  f)  Kara 
TT)V  TfoXefj.iK.rjv  etr^epytav,  i]  Kara  rd  y£vo£,  rj  /card  TrAatrov,  K.r.X. 

10.  CASSIODORUS,  Far.,  lib.  XII. 

11.  CASSIODORUS,  Var.  IV.  15.   A  modern  Greek  ad- 
mirer of  Theodoric,  writes  :     'H  ^>iXofj,ovaia  rov  'Avaoraaiov 
ft£re66&7)  •rridavue  Kal  ev  r-ij  av^y  Qeo6upinovl  &<f>ov  p^ruf  (JXeTrufiev 
TOV  EV    ~P6f.Lij  paaiXevovra  T6r-&av  bfiokojovvra  lavrbv  •  "TTIOTOV 
[U[IT}TTIV  TOV  (iiov  KOI  rfj^  K.vf3epvfo£U£  TOV  ' AvaaTaaiov"  [vos  enim 
estis  regnorum  omnium  decus,  vos  totius  orbis  salutate 
praesidium  .  . .  Regnum  nostrum  imitatio  vestra  forma  est, 
forma  boni  propositi,  unici  exemplar  imperil.  CASSIODORI, 

(13) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

fere  with  his  authority  is  well  known.  The 
tradition  concerning  Edward  the  Confessor, 
if  trustworthy,  proves  only  that  the  Saxons 
had  military  round-tables  at  a  date  when 
Arthur  romances  had  not  yet  been  thought 
of.  It  is  a  mere  inference  to  say  that  the  in- 
stitution of  the  Round  Table  was  transferred 
to  Brittany  and  thence  to  Wales;  and  a  use- 
less inference,  since  it  involves,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  a  view  of  the  Arthur  tales  as 
historical.  That  assumption  would  be  ridicu- 
lous, even  granting  that  Arthur  was  once  a 

Var.,  lib.  I.,  Epist.  I.]  '£2f  6  reAevraZof,  OVTU  /cat  &  Qeo6uplnof 
Karapyel  raf  •ftifpioiiaxiaf  ttironahuv  airdf  iffTrAay^vov  ical 
fidpfiapov  t-dtfiov.  '0  ~Pwfia.iK.bf  "Xabg  el^f  ^rjafMovfjaei  Trheov  T^ 
iajjfj.aivov  al  M^eig  •&earpov}  KUju.(f)6ia,  rpaycjfl/a,  aKTfvfi,  6  <Ji 
Qeo6uplnof  61'  ktiinrov  owTax'&tvTof  imb  *K.aaoio6&pov  6i6daxei 
TOV  Aoov  aiirov  rdf  ffrf/naaia^  TUV  E^T/VLKUV  TOVTUV  A£fewv. 
"ETrctd^  6£  r6re  fufii)  OVTE  rpaywrfovf,  ovre  aUov$  aKr/viKoi>f 
clxtv,  vTroTiderai)  on  TOIOVTOI  ij'h&ov  l/c  Bv^avriov  STTOJ  &va6cdd% aai 
Tovf  vTTjjKdovf  TOV  QeofiupiKov  TT)V  e7C^,T}VMrjv  T£%V>JV'  6ia  Tbv  Adyov 
6f  TOVTOV  ("fheirojitv  rot)f  kv  "Ira/Up  T6r-&ov£  vftpi^ovTaf  rove 
~Bv£avrivovf  enl  'lovcnviavoii  Kal  Tieyovraf  on  If  avruv  fi6vov 
tlfiov  ipx<>[J.evovs  elf  'Ira/ltav  rpa-y^ovf,  fj.ifj.ovs  " 
SATHAS.  'loropinbv  AOW//OV  irepl  TOV  QeaTpov  KOI  Tl]f 
TUV  ~Bv£avTivuv.  /c.r.A.,  p.  T?.&'  (339). 
(14) 


THE  ROUND  TABLE 

British  king,  a  real  flesh  and  blood  person- 
age. Besides,  Rhys  ap  Tudor,  twelfth  cen- 
tury, to  whom  the  British  or  Welsh  Round 
Table  is  attributed,  comes  much  too  late  to 
avail  in  the  Arthur  legend,  though  he  may 
have  had  significance  in  the  politics  of  an  age 
when  the  tomb  of  Arthur  had  to  be  discov- 
ered at  Glastonbury 12  to  quiet  seditious  plots 
against  the  new  Plantagenet  dynasty. 

Round  tables  after  the  twelfth  century 
were  numerous.  But  they  are  manifestly  of 
no  importance  except  as  attesting  the  grow- 
ing popularity  of  the  fiction  which  they  illus- 
trated. This  restrictive  argument  also  applies 


12.  In  1189,  probably  just  before  the  death  of  Henry 
the  Second.  In  identifying  the  tomb  of  Arthur  and 
Guinevere,  the  Plantagenet  party  merely  imitated  a  pro- 
ceeding of  Otto  the  Third  in  Germany,  who  had  opened 
the  tomb  of  Charlemagne,  and  taken  therefrom  the  cross 
which  hung  on  the  neck  of  the  sainted  emperor,  as 
well  as  those  parts  of  the  vesture  which  were  not  gone 
to  decay.  In  both  cases  the  sacrilege,  real  with  Otto, 
pretended  with  Henry,  was  a  political  necessity. 

ds) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

to  certain  forms  of  literature  more  or  less 
vaguely  asserted  as  the  primitive  and  original 
material  of  the  Arthur  romances.  Granting 
that  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  had  a  Celtic  man- 
uscript which  nobody  but  himself  and  Walter 
Calenius  ever  saw,  it  must  still  be  conceded 
that  this  manuscript  had  no  influence  on  sub- 
sequent writings  except  by  Geoffrey's  inter- 
vention. That  Marie  de  France,  a  century  or 
more  after  his  time,  found  written  as  well  as 
oral  Breton  lore  is  defective  evidence,  because 
much  had  happened  in  the  meantime.  The 
relics  of  the  genuinely  ancient  British  bards 
contain  no  signs  of  romance.  They  were 
interested  in  real  events  and  in  heroes  who 
were  their  contemporaries.  Willingly  accept- 
ing the  tales  of  the  Mabinogion  at  the  esti- 
mate, with  regard  to  antiquity,  put  upon 
them  by  Celtic  experts,  one  still  has  to  deal 
with  the  cold  fact  that  the  imagination  of  the 
world  at  large  was  not  touched  by  them,  nor 
(16) 


THE  ROUND  TABLE 

did  it  betray  any  knowledge  of  them  until 
long  after  the  Arthur  tales  were  in  being. 
This  was  not  the  case  with  the  Teutonic  hero 
tales.  Beowulf  was  well  known  as  early  as 
the  eighth  century,  and  even  then  existed 
only  in  a  recension,  with  a  manifestly  dif- 
ferent geographical  setting  from  that  of  the 
original. 


(17) 


Ill 

HENRY  THE  SECOND 

Not  only  was  the  material  of  the  tales 
largely  British,  while  the  form  was  Teu- 
tonic,—  that  is,  Prankish,  after  a  model  dat- 
ing from  a  period  when  the  Franks  had  not 
yet  become  French, —  but  there  was  a  fur- 
ther complication  in  that  the  language  used 
as  a  vehicle  by  the  authors  was  not  in  the  first 
instance  either  English  or  German,  nor  yet 
Latin,  the  ordinary  literary  medium  of  the 
twelfth  century,  but  French — that  is,  Langue- 
doil.  This  was  the  language  of  the  court  of 
England,  of  Normandy,  of  Anjou,  and  of  the 
chivalry  of  those  countries,  and  these  coun- 
tries were  the  ones  most  interested  in  direct- 
ing romance  about  ancient  Britain  to  a  con- 
(18) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

temporary  purpose.  In  fact,  Anjou,  with 
Normandy  and  the  larger  part  of  what  is  now 
France,  was  looked  upon  as  the  property  of 
the  English  King,  who  was  himself  Angevin 
by  birth,1  Norman  by  descent,2  and  English 
only  as  the  result  of  the  treaty  of  Wallingford 
between  his  mother,  the  Empress  Matilda, 
and  King  Stephen,  by  which  he  succeeded  the 
latter  on  the  throne  of  England.  Stephen's 
reign  was  a  time  of  vast  disorder,  and  Henry 
the  Second  found,  on  taking  possession,  that 
he  had  before  him  an  enormous  task.  His 
hopes  and  his  world-wide  popularity 3  were 


1.  Eldest  son  of  Count  Geoffrey  and  born  in  Anjou. 

2.  His  mother,  Matilda,  had  been  the  wife  of  Henry 
the  Fifth,  Holy  Roman  Emperor.     She  was  the  daughter 
of  Henry  the  First  of  England,  and  granddaughter  of 
William  the  Conqueror. 

3.  See  Sir  JAMES  H.  RAMSEY,  The  Angevin  Empire, 
for  a  complete  statement  of  Henry's  successes  as  well 
as  his  failures.    "  Henry's  management  of  foreign  affairs 
was    undeniably    successful.      He    held    France    in    the 
hollow  of  his  hand."    His  wide  renown  Map  attested 
after  his  death  in  the  words:    "Cujus  potestatem  totus 

(19) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

equal  to  it.  It  has  been  said  of  him  that  his 
brain  was  filled  with  the  thought  of  an  Eng- 
land as  great  as  that  of  modern  times.  Un- 
doubtedly his  ideas  were  imperial, —  it  could 
not  have  been  otherwise  in  such  a  man,  with 
such  a  mother, —  but  his  mind  was  guided  by 
a  known  past,  not  an  unknown  future.  No 
afterthought  about  Henry's  errors  of  policy 
can  detract  from  the  imperial  movement  of 
his  earlier  years. 

With   holdings  that  were   at   the   outset 
almost  as  great  as  those  which  Charlemagne 


fere  timet  orbis."  De  Nugis  Curial.,  p.  60.  He  also 
quotes  this  singular  compliment  of  the  French  king  after 
a  battle  in  which  the  latter  had  been  defeated :  "  Mihi 
frequenter  in  omnibus  fere  Franciae  finibus  contigit,  ut 
nunc  et  infortunium  frequentia  durus  sum  parumque 
vereor;  sed  Anglorum  rex  Henricus,  qui  nos  hodie  con- 
fecit,  continuis  jacet  in  successibus,  et  qui  nunquam 
aliquid  sinistri  perpessus  est,  si  contigisset  ei  quod  nobis, 
intolerabiliter  et  immoderate  doleret,  et  prae  nimietate 
doloris  infatuari  possit  aut  mori,  rex  bonus  et  toti  Chris- 
tianismo  necessarius.  Inde  reputo  victoriam  ejus  mihi 
pro  successu  quia  perdidissemus."  Ibid,  p.  218. 
(20) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

obtained  by  force  of  arms,4  Henry  had  every 
reason  to  aspire  to  supremacy  over  all  Chris- 
tendom. The  reading  public  of  Europe  had 
been  assured  in  a  recent  book  of  wide  renown 
by  a  Welshman,  Griffith  ap  Arthur  (Geoffrey 
of  Monmouth),  that  a  Briton  had  once  been 
Roman  emperor,  and  had  been  crowned  at 
Rome.  That  was  surely  precedent  good 
enough  for  the  man  who,  it  is  now  said, 
completed  the  conquest  of  Ireland  by  the 
forgery 5  of  a  papal  decree.  No  doubt 
Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  wrote  his  chronicle 
with  a  very  different  aim  from  that  of 
strengthening  a  line  of  foreign  kings  in  Eng- 
land. More  likely  he  hoped  in  his  own  time 


4.  Charlemagne's   empire   comprised    France,    Ger- 
many west  of  the  Elbe,  Northern  Italy,  and  Spain  north 
of   the    Ebro;    Henry's,    England,    Southern    Scotland, 
Wales,  Ireland,  Normandy,  Maine,  Brittany,  Anjou,  Bur- 
gundy  and   Aquitaine  —  in    fact,    about   the   whole   of 
France  except  the  Isle  de  France. 

5.  See   Professor  Thatcher's   recent   discussion   of 
this  subject 

(21) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

for  what  was  realized  centuries  later  by  the 
accession  of  the  Tudors.  But  Henry  seized 
the  idea.6  Fiction  was  as  useful  to  him  as 
fact.  He  imitated  the  practice  of  the  Ger- 
man king-emperors  by  having  his  eldest  son 
Henry  crowned  as  his  coadjutor,  and  the  two 
certainly  encouraged,  if  they  did  not  directly 
inspire,  the  literary  movement  which  resulted 


6.  There  are  repeated  evidences  that  Henry  urged 
the  theme  upon  romancers  and  poets.  Thus,  in  the 
National  Library  at  Paris  there  is  "  Lancelot  du  Lac  mis 
en  Frangois,  par  [Walter  Mapes],  du  commandement 
d'Henri  roi  d'Angleterre."  HAZLITT'S  WARTON,  Hist. 
Engl.  Poetry,  II.,  p.  in.  Again,  p.  116:  "Quant  Boort 
at  conte  laventure  del  Saint  Graal  teles  com  eles  estoient 
avenues  eles  furent  mises  en  escrit,  gardes  en  lamere  de 
Salisbieres,  dont  Mestre  Galtier  Map  1'estrest  a  faist  son 
livre  du  Saint  Graal  por  lamor  du  roy  Henri  son  sengor, 
qui  fist  lestoire  tralater  del  Latin  en  romanz ;"  and 
p.  118:  "Lancelot  du  Lac  mis  en  Frangois,  par  Robert 
de  Borron  par  le  commandement  de  Henri  roi  d'Angle- 
terre." However,  he,  or  rather  Mr.  Price,  in  a  note  to 
his  well-known  preface  (I.,  p.  48),  mentioned  a  Vatican 
MS.  of  the  Saint  Graal,  which  begins  with  the  words : 
"  Mesir  Robert  de  Borron  qui  cheste  estore  translata  de 
Latine  en  Romance  par  le  commandement  de  Saint 
Eglise." 

(22) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

in  the  translation  of  Geoffrey's  chronicle,  first 
by  Wace  into  Norman  French,  then  into 
English  by  Layamon;  and  parallel  to  this, 
the  expansion  of  the  story  of  Arthur  in 
the  romances  of  the  Graal,  of  Lancelot,  of 
Merlin,  of  Arthur's  Death,  and  of  Perceval. 
The  tradition  which  fixes  the  authorship  of 
most  of  these  works  in  the  person  of  Walter 
Map,7  from  1162  onward  a  man  high  in  the 
confidence  of  English  royalty,  evinces  the 


7.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  remark  that  Map  was 
not  a  Welshman,  as  some  have  stated,  though  he  was 
born  near  enough  to  the  Welsh  border  to  acquire  a  dis- 
like for  Welshmen  little  short  of  that  which  he  had  for 
Cistercian  monks.  See  FABRICIUS,  Bibliotheca  Latino 
Mediae  et  Infimae  Aetatis,  under  the  name  Gualterus; 
LEYSER,  Historia  Poetarum  et  Poematum  Medii  Aevi, 
p.  776,  seq.,  and  WRIGHT,  Biographia  Britannica  Litera- 
ria,  II.,  p.  295,  seq.,  also  the  introduction  to  Wright's 
edition  of  Poems  of  Walter  Mapes  and  of  Map's  De 
Nugis  Curialium,  for  such  particulars  as  are  known  of 
his  career.  He  seems  to  have  quit  literature  and  public 
life  together  about  1196.  His  satirical  remarks  in  old 
age  on  the  court  show  that  he  was  weary  of  its  vanities 
and  mutations. 

(23) 


motive  in  all  the  earliest  portions  of  the 
Arthur  romantic  cycle.  With  two  French 
kings  and  the  French-speaking  nobility  of 
England,  Normandy  and  Anjou  to  please, 
the  stories  could  be  written  only  in  French, 
while  the  hopes  of  future  increase  of  power 
and  the  pride  of  descent  in  these  kings  and 
this  nobility  furnished  the  point  of  view  from 
which  the  romancers  must  contemplate  their 
task.  Because  Charlemagne  was  historically 
crowned  at  Rome,  Arthur  had  to  receive  the 
same  honor,  at  least  in  imagination,  and  the 
whole  of  that  prolonged,  futile  effort  of  Eng- 
lish sovereigns  to  create  a  continental  empire 
had  to  be  forecast  in  the  phantasmal  career 
of  a  British  prince.  The  real  Arthur  fought 
only  against  the  Saxons.  He  never  was  out 
of  Great  Britain,  and  was  commander  of  a 
whole  army  in  but  one  battle.  It  is  difficult 
to  conceive  how  all  that  farrago  of  imperial- 
ism could  have  been  imagined  before  Planta- 
(24) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

genet  times.  As  to  Henry  the  Second,  com- 
ing as  he  did  from  a  continental  realm,  large 
in  fact  and  still  larger  in  its  possibilities,  his 
feeling  must  have  been  very  similar  to  that  of 
a  much  later  King  of  England,  William  the 
Third,  who  only  accepted  the  English  crown 
in  order  to  strengthen  his  armies  for  his 
struggle  with  the  King  of  France. 

What  Henry  the  Second  hoped  to  attain 
was  prefigured  in  tales,  the  most  significant 
of  which  were  written,  as  one  may  say,  under 
his  eye.  Nor  could  Henry  have  failed  to  see 
the  ecclesiastical  aspect  of  the  affair  in  the 
light  that  had  been  habitual  with  the  Norman 
princes.8  There  was  no  cause  obvious  in  the 
middle  of  the  twelfth  century  why  the  Nor- 
man power,  which  had  spread  so  widely  in 
less  than  two  hundred  years,  should  fall  short 


8.  Hallam  alludes  to  the  "closer  dependence  upon 
Rome  "  produced  by  the  Norman  Conquest.  See  BRYCE, 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  160,  for  the  substance  of  a  letter 
from  Gregory  VII.  to  William  the  Conqueror. 

(25) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

of  Roman  greatness.9  Then  the  knightly 
brotherhood  foreshadowed  in  the  recent  or- 
ganization of  the  Templars  10  would  cover  all 
Christendom,  and  Church  and  State  would 
march  forward  together  in  a  quest  of  which 
the  Graal  was  only  a  faint  symbol. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  enumerate  the 
royal  and  noble  houses  of  Europe  that  were 
furnished  in  those  days  with  pedigrees  reach- 
ing straight  back  without  a  break  to  the 
Round  Table.  To  illustrate  the  general  fact, 
the  single  instance  may  be  noted  of  Edward, 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  beheaded  in  1521,  who 
caused  an  English  translation  to  be  made  by 
Robert  Copland  of  the  French  romance,  The 
Knight  of  the  Swan,  a  cognate  of  Lohengrin 
and  Perceval,  because  he  traced  his  descent 
through  Godfrey  of  Bullogne  back  to  Helias, 


9.  Hallam  says :    "  That  high-spirited  race  of  Nor- 
mandy, whose  renown  then  filled  Europe  and  Asia." 

10.  Founded,  according  to  Matthew  Paris,  in  1118. 

(26) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

Knight  of  the  Swan.11  But  Arthur  and  his 
court  became  the  ideal  of  society  and  almost 
touched  the  solid  ground  of  universal  belief. 
It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Celtic  imagina- 
tion worked  this  miracle.  On  the  contrary, 
it  was  the  organizing  capacity  of  the  Galli- 
cized Teutons,12  once  Northmen,  now  grow- 
ing daily  more  Frenchified,  which  gave  to  the 
wildest  improbabilities  the  hue  and  consist- 
ency of  history.  These  transformed  Scandi- 
navians achieved  so  much  because  they  read 
their  own  age  in  all  its  details,  its  chivalry, 
its  crusading  spirit,  its  religious  dogmas,  its 
ecclesiastical  forms,  its  social  customs,  its  per- 
sonal and  national  ideals,  its  moralizing  tem- 
per, its  allegorizing  habit,  and  above  all,  its 


11.  THOMS,  Early  English  Prose  Romances,  Intro- 
duction, p.  ii. 

12.  There  is  an  eloquent  tribute  to  the  character- 
istics of  the  Normans  in  JUSSERAND'S  volume  on  Lang- 
land's  Vision  of  Piers  the  Plowman. 

(27) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

gift  of  telling  gabs,13  into  a  remote  past,  dex- 
terously using  the  scattered  lore  of  that  very 
past  to  give  their  scheme  an  air  of  truth. 

The  first  great  blow  to  Henry's  hopes  was 
the  death  of  his  son  in  1182.  Then  he  quar- 
reled with  the  Church,  and  his  remaining  sons 
almost  dismembered  his  realm.  Long  before 
the  end  of  the  century  the  Order  of  Knights 
Templars,  as  Map  himself  testifies,14  began  to 
show  signs  of  degeneracy.  Thus  it  may  be 
regarded,  on  purely  external  evidence,  as  cer- 
tain that,  so  far  as  the  cycle  of  Arthur  tales 
belongs  to  the  twelfth  century,  it  is  com- 
prised in  the  earlier  years  of  Henry's  reign. 
This  must  be  particularly  the  case  with  the 
romance  of  the  Graal  in  view  of  its  uncom- 
promising orthodoxy  on  the  doctrine  of  tran- 


13.  A  gab  usually  was  a  mere  vulgar,  often  obscene 
boast,  but  in  the  mouth  of  a  person  of  genius  it  became 
a  brilliant  improvisation. 

14.  For   Map's   short    essay   on   the   Templars    see 
De  Nugis  Curialium,  p.  29,  seq. 

(28) 


HENRY  THE  SECOND 

substantiation,  and  of  the  figure  of  Sir  Gala- 
had, which  was  probably  meant  as  a  tribute 
to  the  younger  Henry. 

In  connection  with  this  may  be  mentioned 
the  curious  afterthought  of  the  romancers, 
who,  having  created  Galahad,  decided  to  give 
his  father  the  same  name.  They  explained 
that  the  latter  was  called  Galahad  in  infancy, 
but  received  the  name  of  Lancelot  when  ab- 
ducted by  the  Lady  of  the  Lake.  Another 
coincidence  is  to  be  found  in  the  female 
names.  The  mother  of  Sir  Galahad  was 
Elaine,  and  the  mother  of  young  Henry,  wife 
of  Henry  the  Second,  was  Eleanor.15  That 


15.  If  Elaine  figures  in  the  romances  after  anything 
but  a  modest  fashion,  Eleanor  was  worse,  according  to 
Map,  who  had  no  respect  for  persons  after  they  were 
dead.  Cui  [Stephano]  successit  Henricus  Matildis  filius, 
in  quern  injecit  oculos  incestos  Alienor  Francorum  regina, 
Ludovici  piissimi  conjux,  et  injustum  machinata  divor- 
tium  nupsit  ei,  cum  tamen  haberet  in  fama  privata  quod 
Gaufrido  patri  suo  lectum  Ludovici  participassot.  De 
Nugis  Curialium,  p.  226. 

(29) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

Henry  the  Second  meant  in  his  younger  days 
to  go  on  crusade  is  fairly  demonstrated  by  the 
lines  of  Joseph  of  Exeter: 

Tuque,  oro,  tuo  da,  maxime,  vati 
Ire  iter  inceptum,  Trojamque  aperire  jacentem: 
Te  sacrae  assument  acies,  divinaque  bella, 
Tune  dignum  majore  tuba;  tune  pectore  toto 
Nitar,  et  immensum  mecum  spargere  per  orbem. 

But  the  elder  Henry,  like  the  elder  Gala- 
had, was  of  dubious  quality  for  a  holy  warrior. 
So  the  younger  Henry  should  have  been  his 
substitute  in  the  crusade,  as  the  younger  Gala- 
had was  destined  to  achieve  the  Graal  quest, 
of  which  his  father  was  unworthy.  But  Henry 
died,  and  Richard,  a  man  of  military  genius, 
but  utterly  incapable  as  a  statesman,  was  left 
to  carry  on  war  against  Saladin. 


(30) 


IV 
THE  ENVIRONMENT, 

The  environing  conditions  that  made  the 
sudden  development  of  the  chief  Arthur  ro- 
mances possible  in  a  few  years  between  1162 
and  1182  appear  to  have  been: 

First — An  awakened  attention  to  the  pop- 
ular lore  of  the  British  race  in  Brittany  and 
elsewhere.  Enough  and  more  than  enough 
has  been  written  by  various  critics  on  this 
point.1 

Second — An  attention  equally  alert  to  the 
boundless  novelty  of  the  strange  world  in  the 
East  which  was  opened  to  the  astonished  eyes 


i.  See  RHYS  and  NUTT,  as  previously  cited;  also 
CAMPBELL,  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands.  In  contrast 
with  these,  Sir  GEORGE  Cox,  in  his  book  on  Aryan  myth- 
ology, dwelt  on  classical  analogies,  it  must  be  confessed 
with  much  acuteness  and  considerable  success. 

(31) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

of  Europe  by  the  crusades.2  The  most  note- 
worthy single  literary  event  of  the  twelfth 
century  was  the  translation  of  the  Koran  into 
Latin  in  1 143  3  by  two  monkish  scholars,  one 
of  whom  was  an  Englishman.  This  fact  lends 
great  weight  to  the  opinion  of  those  critics  * 


2.  "  The  riches  of  Asia,  when  brought  into  Europe, 
soon  gave  birth  to  a  desire  for  the  cultivation  of  the  arts 
which  embellish  life,  and  of  the  sciences  which  double 
the  faculties  of  man."    MICHAUD,  Hist,  of  the  Crusades, 
Engl.  Transl.,  III.,  p.  330. 

3.  Machumetis     Sarracenorum     vita     ac     doctrina 
omnis,  quae  et  Ismaelitarum  lex,  et  Alcoranum  dicitur, 
ex  Arabica  lingua  ante  CCCC  annos  in  Latinam  trans- 
lata.     .     .     .     Item  Philippi  Melanchthonis  viri  doctiss. 
praemonitio  ad  lectorem,  etc.    BASIL,  1543. 

Machumetis  ej  usque  successorum  vitae  doctrina,  ac 
ipse  Alcoran,  quae  D.  Petrus,  abbas  Clun.  ex  Arabica 
lingua,  in  Lat.  transferri  curavit,  cum  Phil.  Melanch- 
thonis praemonitione,  etc.  TIGURI  (?),  1550. 

Huet  declares  the  translation  to  be  of  no  value  what- 
ever. Fabricius  flatly  contradicts  him.  No  doubt  both. 
from  different  points  of  view,  were  influenced  by  the 
name  of  Melanchthon.  Morhof  remarks  that  no  ver- 
sion of  the  Koran  previous  to  his  day  could  be  trusted. 
Polyhistor,  III.,  5,  i,  22. 

4.  This  opinion  is  mentioned  by  Wilson  in  his  notes 
to  Dunlop. 

(32) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

who  derive  the  account  of  the  miraculous 
table  in  the  story  of  the  Graal  directly  from 
the  following  passage  in  the  Koran: 

"  When  the  apostles  said,  '  O  Jesus,  Son 
of  Mary!  is  thy  Lord  able  to  send  down  to  us 
a  table  from  heaven?'  he  said,  '  Fear  God,  if 
ye  be  believers;'  and  they  said,  '  We  desire  to 
eat  therefrom  that  our  hearts  may  be  at  rest, 
and  that  we  may  know  that  what  thou  hast 
told  us  is  the  truth,  and  that  we  may  be 
thereby  amongst  the  witnesses.'  Said  Jesus, 
the  Son  of  Mary,  'O  God,  our  Lord!  send 
down  to  us  a  table  from  heaven  to  be  to  us 
as  a  festival  —  to  the  first  of  us  and  to  the 
last,  and  a  sign  from  Thee  —  and  grant  us 
provision,  for  Thou  art  the  best  of  providers.' 
God  said,  '  Verily  I  am  about  to  send  it  down 
to  you.'  "  5 

This  passage  is  connected  even  more 
closely  with  incidents  of  the  graal  fiction  by 


5.    Palmer's  translation  of  the  Koran,  Sacred  Books 
of  the  East,  VI.,  p.  114. 

(33) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

the  Mohammedan  tradition,  which  adds  that 
when  the  table  descended,  it  bore  a  covered 
dish,  in  which  lay  a  fish  cooked  and  ready 
to  be  eaten.  All  who  ate  of  this  fish  were 
rejuvenated  and  healed  of  all  their  infirmi- 
ties. The  fish  as  a  symbol  in  universal  use 
among  early  Christians  is  known  to  every 
reader  of  Quo  Vadis? 

Not  to  be  troubled  with  a  mass  of  in- 
stances, it  will  suffice  to  remark  that  the  word 
"  Sarras,"  as  the  name  of  a  city,  is  plainly 
an  effort  to  give  the  Saracens  a  geographical 
point  of  origin.  Sarrazin 6  was  a  common 


6.  For  example,  in  Herber's  paraphrase,  a  little  later 
than  the  Arthur  romances,  of  Jehan  de  Hauteselve's 
Latin  Dolopathos, 

"  Bien  as  oit  de  la  roine 

Sibile,  ki  fut  sarrazine." 

Sarrasin  remains  the  accepted  orthography  in  the  French 
language. 

Nihil  enim  aliud  notat  vox  Saracenorum  quam 
populos  orientales,  licet  vulgus  eos  a  Sara  autumet. 
HADRIANUS  RELANDUS,  Dissertationes  Miscellaneae,  pars 
secunda,  p.  80. 

(34) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

orthography  in  former  times.  Mandeville,7 
in  locating  this  city  in  Media,  probably  de- 
pended upon  the  Graal  romance  for  his  infor- 
mation. Galahad,  or  rather  Galaad,  as  it  ap- 
pears in  the  old  French  of  the  romances,  is 
the  usual  form,  not  only  there,  but  in  Latin, 
of  the  name  that  appears  as  Gilead  8  in  the 
English  Bible.  It  points  to  a  forgotten  detail 
of  English  aspirations  9  in  the  crusades. 


7.  Of  course  "  Sir  John  Maundevile  "  is  taken  here, 
like  "  Sir  Thomas  Malory,"  to  be  a  mere  pen  name,  and 
his  book  as  a  compilation  not  only  of  travelers'  tales, 
but  of  information  from  all  kinds  of  books,  ancient  and 
modern,  a  work  of  the  closet  and  not  the  writing  of  a 
man  who  had  traveled. 

8.  Still   retained   in   modern   French.     The   name 
figured  geographically  in  a  significant  way  in  the  legend 
of  Elijah,  as  exemplified  in  the  chronicle  of  Godfrey  of 
Viterbo,  who  was  contemporary  with  the  early  Arthurian 
romancers :    Elias  de  tribu  Aaron,  cum  in  utero  matris 
suae  esset  in  Galaad,  Sobi  pater  ejus  somnium  vidit, 
quod   nascente   Elia,   viri   candidis   utentes  vestimentis, 
involvebant  eum  candidis,  et  ei  pro  cibis  ignem  ad  nutri- 
mentum  subministrabant.    Pantheon,  pars  xiii.,  STRUVII 
PISTORII,  Rerum  Germanicarum  Scriptores,  II.,  p.  223. 

g.   Probably  the  founding  of  a  kingdom  east  of  the 

(35) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

Third  —  The  immense  expansion  of  the 
educational  system  of  Europe,  causing  troops 
of  students  to  rove  from  city  to  city  and  coun- 
try to  country 10  in  search  of  famous  schools 
and  instructors.  The  intercommunication  that 
resulted  among  the  students  gathered  at  great 
schools  led  to  wider  and  wider  acquaintance 
on  the  part  of  each  with  the  history,  traditions 
and  literature  of  other  countries  than  his  own. 
For  this  reason,  whole  fields  of  literary  effort 
—  the  vision  literature  that  culminated  in 
Dante's  Divina  Commedia,  the  great  group 


Jordan  and  south  of  Antioch  and  Syria,  in  the  region 
sacred  to  the  memory  of  Elijah,  where  he  was  expected 
to  return  to  the  world  for  the  final  conflict  with  Anti- 
christ. This  would  have  been  all  of  one  piece  with  the 
return  of  Arthur  to  wield  the  empire  of  Christendom. 
10.  "The  two  great  parent  universities  [Paris  and 
Bologna]  arose  about  the  same  time  —  during  the  last 
thirty  years  of  the  twelfth  century.  They  arose  out  of 
different  sides  of  that  wonderful  deepening  and  broaden- 
ing of  the  stream  of  human  culture  which  may  be  called 
the  Renaissance  of  the  twelfth  century."  RASHDALL, 
The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  I.,  p.  19. 

(36) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

of  Irish  Voyages,  the  magical  romances  of 
Virgil  and  others, —  all  came  into  the  gen- 
eral view  of  Europe  about  the  close  of  the 
century. 

Fourth  —  The  rapid  advance  of  the  ver- 
nacular languages,  and  particularly  French, 
to  literary  utility.  This  advance  n  preceded 
the  mania  for  story-telling.  Provence,  which 
taught  all  the  mediaeval  nations  the  art  of 
poetry,  cared  nothing  for  tales  12  until  after 
its  literature  began  to  decline.  These  were 
developed  in  Northern  France,  in  England 
and  Germany.  Of  course  there  is  a  question 


11.  This  is  substantiated  by  the  ordinary  histories 
of  literature. 

12.  "  If   we   diligently   examine   their   history,    we 
shall  find  that  the  poetry  of  the  first  troubadours  con- 
sisted in  satires,  moral  fables,  allegories  and  sentimental 
sonnets.   .   .    .   The  troubadours  who  composed  metrical 
romances  form  a  different  species,  and  should  be  con- 
sidered separately.    And  this  latter  class  seems  to  have 
commenced  at  a  later  period,  not  till  after  the  crusades 
had  effected  a  great  change  in  the  manners  and  ideas  of 
the  Western  world."    HAZLITT'S  WARTON,  II,  p.  148. 

(37) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

of  precedence  between  the  epopee  of  Charle- 
magne and  that  of  Arthur.13  But  if  the  Song 
of  Roland  was  sung  at  the  Battle  of  Hast- 
ings,14 there  seems  to  be  little  need  of  further 
discussion,  for  that  battle  took  place  more 
than  three-quarters  of  a  century  before  the 
Arthurian  muse  chipped  a  single  crack  in  her 
shell.15  And  the  Roland  song  was  already 
old.  The  conclusion  must  be  that  the  Charle- 
magne tales,  probably  told  in  the  first  place 
of  an  earlier  court  than  his,16  existed  as  folk- 


13.  DUNLOP   treats    the    Arthur   tales    as    if   their 
priority  was  unquestionable. 

14.  "  In    William's    army    was    a    valiant    warrior 
named  Taillefer,  who  was  distinguished  no  less  for  the 
minstrel  arts.    .    .   .    He   .   .    .   animated  his  countrymen 
with    songs    in   praise    of   Charlemagne    and    Roland " 
and  Oliver  "  qui  mourruent  en  Rainschevaux."    PERCY, 
Reliques,    WHEATLEY'S    edition,    I.,    pp.    354    and    403. 
BURNEY,  History  of  Music,  II.,  pp.  275-280. 

15.  That  is,  if  written  evidence  only  is  to  be  de- 
pended upon.     With  the  aid  of  myth  and  oral  tradition, 
the  case  for  the  Arthur  epic  can  be  stated  somewhat 
differently. 

16.  Charlemagne  is  said  by  his  biographers  to  have 

(.38) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

poetry  before  they  were  amplified  by  pro- 
fessional singers  and  writers,  while  there  is 
no  evidence  that  the  earliest  Arthur  fiction, 
namely,  the  Graal  story,  had  any  basis  in  folk- 
lore, though  popular  material  was  freely  used 
in  concocting  it. 

Fifth  —  The  aspirations  of  the  papacy 
toward  universal  supremacy.  The  origin  of 
the  Arthurian  cycle,  so  far  as  it  can  now  be 
ascertained,  must  be  dated  near  the  middle  of 
the  twelfth  century.  At  that  time  the  heat 
was  still  felt  of  the  fierce  struggle  of  Alexan- 
der II.,17  Gregory  VII.,18  and  other  less  able 
Popes,  with  the  temporal  power.  In  fact, 
there  might  be  men  still  alive  who  could  re- 
member Gregory.  His  power,  both  as  papal 


made  a  collection  in  writing  of  ancient  Prankish  songs, 
which  was  destroyed  by  his  too  pious  son. 

17.  It  was  this  Pope  who  began  the  struggle  with 
the  Emperor  Henry  IV.  that  culminated  at  Canossa,  and 
centuries  later  furnished  Bismarck  one  of  his  most  elo- 
quent speeches. 

18.  See  BRYCE,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  pp.  158  seq., 

(39) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

adviser  and  as  Pope,  was  intimately  asso- 
ciated with  the  reform  of  clerical  manners  as 
well  as  the  enlargement  of  the  papal  author- 
ity.19 In  the  ascetic  purity  of  life,  so  urgently 
advocated  and  so  indifferently  exemplified 
throughout  the  earliest  Arthur  tales,  is  re- 
flected this  influence,  which  permeated  all 


217,  389.  For  a  poetical  account  of  Gregory's  exile  and 
death  see  the  poem  of  William  of  Apulia,  lib  V.,  Leibnitz 
Script.  Rerr.  Brunsw.,  I.,  p.  616 : 


quem  nee  persona  nee  aun 


Unquam  flexit  amor- 


19.    One  of  the  great  struggles  of  the  time  was  in 
behalf  of  celibacy  — 

"  Namque  sacerdotes,  Levitae,  clericus  omnis 
Hac  regione  palam  se  conjugio  sociabant," 

wrote  William  of  Apulia  in  the  eleventh  century;  and 
still,  near  the  close  of  the  twelfth,  the  ribald  Goliards 
were  ringing  the  changes  on  the  same  theme : 

"  Non  est  Innocentius,  immo  nocens  vere 
Qui  quod  Deus  docuit,  studet  abolere ; 
Jussit  enim  Dominus  foeminas  habere, 
Sed  hoc  noster  pontifex  jussit  prohibere." 

'These  lines  were  credited  to  Walter  Map,  but  probably 
he  was  not  the  author. 

(40) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

Europe.  Gregory  died  an  exile  from  his  see, 
the  guest  of  Robert  Guiscard,  a  Norman  ruler 
of  Sicily.  He  felt  that  he  had  been  persecuted 
to  the  death  for  his  effort  to  purify  Christen- 
dom.20 The  authors  of  the  earliest  Arthur 
tales  must  have  envisaged  the  contests  of 
the  times  in  much  the  same  way.  Thus  the 
struggle  of  the  papacy  and  the  empire  seems 
to  be  allegorized  in  the  well-known  passage 
where  the  Church  in  the  form  of  a  lion  is 
beset  by  a  dragon.  The  subsequent  romantic 
explanation  of  the  allegory  is  as  fictitious  as 
that  which  it  interprets.  All  must  be  taken 
as  an  effort  to  read  the  facts  of  the  twelfth 
century  according  to  the  ideas  supposed  to 
be  proper  to  the  fourth. 

It  is  a  misdirection  of  thought  to  imagine 
that  the  Arthur  romances  were  inspired  by 
Henry  the  Second  as  a  defense  against  papal 


20.    "I  have  loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity,  there- 
fore I  die  in  exile." 

(41) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

encroachments.21  If  he  or  the  romancers  had 
meant,  in  looking  back  upon  a  feigned  an- 
tiquity, to  claim  superiority  for  the  British 
Church,  the  point  would  have  been  made  clear 
even  to  the  proverbial  wayfarer.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  tales  emphasize  the  spiritual  author- 
ity22 of  the  Church.  But  they  also  aim  to  put 
the  Angevin-English  monarchs  into  the  same 
rank,  as  regarded  the  papacy,  as  was  held  by 
the  Carolingians  because  of  the  mutual  good 
offices  of  Charlemagne  and  the  Roman  See. 
If  this  pretended  history  had  come  to  be 
looked  on  as  real  history,  it  is  easy  to  see 
how  that  would  have  contributed  to  the 
Angevin  notion  of  an  empire,  consolidated  in 
equal  alliance  with  the  Church,  from  which 
not  only  evil  living,  but  all  heresy  would  be 


21.  Paulin  Paris  was  primarily  responsible  for  this 
purely  mythical  view  of  the  primitive  British  Church. 

22.  "  Holy  Church,"  a  phrase  common  in  the  ro- 
mances, was  utterly  foreign  to  the  ancient  communion* 
that  were  under  the  Johannine  ritual. 

(42) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

forever  excluded.  The  aim  was  to  make  the 
fiction  even  more  convincing  than  history  by 
giving  it  the  vogue  of  an  inspired  writing.23 
Thus  the  Graal  story  in  its  various  forms  is 
in  part  a  redaction  of  apocrypha  which  still 
retained  their  credit  in  the  twelfth  century 
despite  the  censure  of  Pope  Gelasius;24  and 
in  addition  to  this  interweaving  of  revered 
legend,  claimed  a  divine  original  written  by 
Jesus  Christ  himself.25  Preposterous  as  this 


23.  Probably  the   romancers   come   the  nearest   to 
downright  blasphemy  when  they  reckon  the  descent  of 
Lancelot  du  Lac  in  the  eighth  generation  from  the  family 
of  Jesus  Christ.    They  are  not  even  careful  to  make  it 
clear  that  Lancelot  could  not  be  a  direct  descendant  of 
the    Saviour.     The    case    is    somewhat    similar    to    the 
American  trick  of  mentioning  persons  as  descendants  of 
Washington. 

24.  Gelasius  L,  whose  pontificate  lasted   from  492 
to  496.     The  Gospel  of  Nicodemus,  one  of  the  books 
much  used  by  the  romancers,  can  be  read  in  the  English 
Apocryphal  New  Testament,  which  now  has  the  imprim- 
atur of  the  late  DeWitt  Talmage.     Vindicta  Salvatoris, 
a  Greek  fiction,  is  printed  in  TISCHENDORF'S  Evangclia 
Apocrypha. 

25.  The  claim  was  made  in  the  book  itself,  and  it 

(43) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

was,  it  showed  that  somebody  between  the 
Bay  of  Biscay  and  the  Roman  Wall  was  up 
on  the  secret  practices  of  both  State  and 
Church  in  earlier  times. 

That  Henry  the  Second  resented  the  direct 
interference  of  the  papacy  in  the  affairs  of 
England,  as  in  the  famous  case  of  Battle 
Abbey,26  or  that,  comparatively  late  in  his 
reign,  he  had  a  fatal  controversy  with  the 
Church  in  the  person  of  Becket,27  does  not 


was  added  that  Jesus  wrote  nothing  else.  This  state- 
ment seems  to  fix  a  date  line  for  the  apocryphal  cor- 
respondence between  Christ  and  Abgarus  in  Western 
literature. 

26.  Adrian  IV.  had  interfered  in  a  quarrel  between 
the  Bishop  of  Chichester  and  the  Abbot  of  Battle,  enjoin- 
ing the  latter  to  obey  his  diocesan.     When  the  case  came 
up  for  trial  before  the  King,  the  fact  was  disclosed  that 
the   Bishop  had  appealed  to  the   Pope.    He  made  an 
angry   and   apparently   profane   speech   to   the   Bishop, 
which  the  monks  expurgated  in  their  chronicle.     Chroni- 
con  de  Bella,  pp.  91-2.     Other  instances  in  Henry's  reign, 
of  earlier  and  later  years,  will  occur  to  the  reader. 

27.  The  main  incidents  in  the  affair  of  Becket  are 
too  well  known  to  require  recapitulation  in  this  place. 

(44) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

bear  on  the  question  at  all.  The  whole  body 
of  Arthurian  romance,  so  far  as  it  could  in- 
terest him,  was  already  in  writing,  and  had 
become  the  property  of  the  trouveres,  to  be 
wrought  by  them  into  any  form  they  desired. 
His  penance  for  the  killing  of  Becket,  unwill- 
ing though  it  was,  suffices  to  show  that  his 
idea  of  the  relations  between  Church  and 
State  was  still  what  it  had  been.  This  idea 
was  practically  equivalent  to  the  theory  ad- 
vanced by  Gervase  of  Tilbury,28  near  Henry's 


28.  Duo  sunt  quibus  hie  mundus  regitur,  sacerdo- 
tium  et  regnum.  .  .  .  Uterque  divinae  legis  executor 
suum  justitiae  debitum  cuique  tribuit,  malos  coercendo 
et  bonos  remunerando.  Quippe  divisum  imperium  cum 
Jove  Caesar  habens  terrena  moderator  et  lutea  figmenta 
judicat,  haec  probans,  ista  conterens.  .  .  .  Ecce  quod 
duobus  rectoribus  mundus  iste  subjicitur,  et  tamen  a 
manu  sacerdotali  Rex  principatus  sui  unctionem  habet, 
et  ab  utrorumque  domino  uterque  suam  recipit  potes- 
tatem.  .  .  .  Constantini  gesta  si  memoramus,  ab  ipso 
collata  legitur  in  partes  occidentales  tantum  Sylvestro. 
Orientalis  regio  facta  est  caput  imperil.  Licet  vicario 
Christi  Petro  in  tempore  ej usque  successoribus  jus  regis 
in  occidente  constituisset,  diademate  Caesaris  ceterisque 

(45) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

own  times,  by  William  of  Ockam 29  in  the 
next  century,  and  consecrated  by  Dante  in 
his  De  Monarchic, 30 —  that  is,  of  a  Church 


insignibus  Sylvestro  collatis  ad  gloriam :  Non  tamen 
imperii  nomen  aut  imperium  ipsum  transire  voluit  impe- 
rator  in  Sylvestrum :  quod  sibi  ac  successoribus  suis 
conservavit  intactum,  sola  sede  mutata,  non  dignitate. 
Unde  primus  Karolus  magnus  a  Graecorum  ditione 
legitur  recessisse,  monitu  Gregorii  papae,  ut  I.  T.  de 
imperio.  Quis  ergo  major  in  terrenis,  qui  dat,  an  qui 
accipit?  Profecto  qui  dat  autor  est  honoris,  non  qui 
accipit.  Deus  autor  imperii,  imperator  autor  papalis 
triumphi.  GERVAS.,  Otia  Imperialia.  Introduction. 

29.  "  In  agreement  with  the  stricter  division  of  his 
order  [the  Spirituales,  a  faction  of  the  Franciscans],  he 
[Ockam]    had    always    deduced    from    the   humility   of 
Christ  and  of  the  apostles  the  conclusion  that  the  Pope 
ought  not  to  possess  temporal  power.    To  this  was  added 
later  the  conviction  that  as  the  Pope  must  be  subject  to 
princes  in  worldly  matters,  he  ought  to  be  subject  to  the 
Church   in   spiritual   matters.     In   this   opinion   he  was 
confirmed  more  and  more  by  the  party  spirit  shown  by 
the  incumbent  of  the  Papal  chair  [John  XXII.]  against 
the  Spirituales."    ERDMANN,  Hist.  Phil,  Engl.  Transl., 
I.,  P.  503. 

30.  Compare    with    the    opinions    of   Gervase    and 
Ockam,  Dr.  Schaff's  compact  summary  of  Dante's  Mon- 
archia:   "  He  proves  in  three  parts,  first,  that  there  must 
be  a   universal   empire;    secondly,   that   this   monarchy 

(46) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

wholly  spiritual  and  spiritually  supreme,  and 
a  State  (that  is,  a  monarch  —  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth was  not  the  first  King  who  thought, 
"  I  am  the  State,")  supreme,  even  over  the 
hierarchy,  in  temporal  affairs.  Given  a  State 
in  which  purity  of  life  was  maintained,  from 
which  all  doctrine  condemned  by  the  Church 
was  excluded,  and  there  would  be  no  excuse, 
so  long  as  the  world  lasted,  for  papal  inter- 


belongs,  of  right  and  by  tradition,  to  the  Roman  people ; 
and,  thirdly,  that  the  monarchy  depends  immediately  upon 
God  and  not  upon  the  Pope.  The  conflicting  interests 
of  society  in  his  judgment  require  an  impartial  arbiter, 
since  kings  of  limited  territories  are  always  liable  to  be 
influenced  by  selfish  motives  and  aims.  A  universal 
monarch  alone  can  insure  universal  peace.  The  right  of 
Rome  is  based  on  the  fact  that  Christ  was  born  under 
the  reign  of  Augustus  and  died  under  Tiberius.  The 
universal  rule  of  God  is  divided  between  the  Emperor 
and  the  Pope ;  the  Emperor  is  supreme  by  divine  right 
in  temporal  things,  and  is  to  guide  the  human  race  to 
temporal  felicity,  in  accordance  with  the  teaching  of 
philosophy;  the  Pope  also  by  divine  right  is  supreme  in 
spiritual  and  ecclesiastical  things,  and  is  to  guide  men  to 
eternal  life,  in  accordance  with  the  truth  of  Revelation." 
SCHAFF,  Literature  and  Poetry,  p.  320. 

(47) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

ference.  The  refinements  of  Greek  specula- 
tion, however,  as  applied  to  theology  in  the 
supposititious  works  of  Dionysius  the  Areo- 
pagite  31  and  in  the  compilations  of  John  of 
Damascus,32  in  contact  with  Western  literal- 
ism, made  it  a  superhuman  task  to  suppress 
heresy,  and  so  there  is  in  the  environment  of 
the  earliest  Graal  romances  a  most  important 
factor, — 

Sixth  —  The   nascent   scholastic   philoso- 
phy.    Ever  since  John  Erigena,  at  the  court 


31.  For  the  influence  of  the  author  of  the  works  under 
this  name,  see  the  larger  histories  of  philosophy.  His 
authority  as  to  the  usages  of  the  Eucharist  is  shown  by 
the  following  liturgical  note:  EZf  rf«  rb  Xonrbv,  ri&eftcv 
s  ruv  '  Ayiuv  '  a(  av  Tr/UtoDf,  ovS1  e/Wrrovf,  cM.' 
Sa,  A.ard  fiifj.rjatv  TUV  ovpaviuv  rayfiarov.  "Qotrtp 
yap  inside,  /card  rbv  irohvv  iv  deo'Xoylg  kiovvaiov  rbv  'Apeo- 
irayiTijv,  flf  ewea  rdy/uara  Traaa  TOVTUV  ff  orparm  6iJjptfTat,  OVTU 
navrav'&a  •deoirpeirearaTa  '  6  avrbf  yap  iv  a.fj<f>orepoif  rvy%avuv 
SiarE^ei  Irjffovf.  K.  r.  X.  Euchologion  Mega,  p.  46. 

32.  Spanheim  was  the  first,  perhaps,  to  point  out 
thaf  Peter  Lombard,  the  father  of  Western  Realists, 
gathered  his  material  and  drew  his  method  from  the 
works  of  John  of  Damascus.  MORHOF,  Polyhistor.,  II., 
I.,  xiv..  I. 

(48) 


THE  ENVIRONMENT 

of  Charles  the  Bald,33  had  stirred  up  the  ques- 
tion of  the  real  presence  of  the  body  and  blood 
of  Christ  in  the  elements  of  the  Eucharist,  a 
fire  had  smoldered  in  ecclesiastical  Europe 
that  was  bound  to  break  out  some  time  in  a 
general  conflagration.  To  theologians  may 
be  left  the  dispute  as  to  the  antiquity  of  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  But  it  is  plain 
that  between  the  opinions  held  by  Erigena, 
similar,  at  least  in  a  general  way,  to  those  of 
most  modern  Protestants,  and  those  of  Pas- 
chasius  Radbertus,34  who  reduced  the  Cath- 
olic belief  to  dogmatic  form,  there  could  be 
no  peace.  With  the  spread  of  education  in 
the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  the  prob- 


33.  Erigena  figures  largely  in  all  histories  of  philos- 
ophy.    But  it  is  disputed  whether  or  not  he  was  the 
author  of  the  book  that  made  most  of  the  trouble  for 
later  theologians. 

34.  Paschasius   is  barely  mentioned   in   Erdmann's 
history  of  philosophy.     His  book  was  entitled  De  Cor- 
pore    et   Sanguine    Christi.      He    flourished    about    the 
middle  of  the  ninth  century. 

(49) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

lem  became  the  one  unfailing  characteristic 
of  theological  controversy.  Of  all  the  sects 
accused  of  heresy  in  those  centuries,  not  one 
omitted  to  emphasize  its  disbelief  in  the  Cath- 
olic doctrine  of  the  Eucharist.  On  every 
other  point  they  varied,  but  in  this  they  were 
a  unit.  Neo-manichaeans,  Gandulfians,  Bogo- 
mils,  Tanchelinians,  Petrobrussians,  Henri- 
cians,  Arnaldists,  Apostolians,  Cathari,  Wal- 
denses,  Almaricans,  Albigenses,  Paulicians 
and  Lollards,35  all  of  whom  sprang  into  notice 
in  the  twelfth  century,  agreed  in  denying  this 
doctrine  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  no  matter 
how  widely  they  diverged  from  one  another 
in  the  statement  of  their  own  respective  views. 


35.  In  this  summary,  Noel  Alexandra's  ecclesias- 
tical history,  edition  of  Mansi,  has  been  consulted.  But 
all  the  church  historians  agree  on  the  main  point,  though 
they  differ  like  heretics  on  details. 


(So) 


V 

BERENGAR  OF  TOURS 

Over  all  these  towered  the  host  of  Sacra- 
mentarians,  who  refused  to  be  shut  out  of  the 
Church,  who  had  absolutely  no  quarrel  with 
it  except  on  the  question  of  the  Eucharist, 
and  in  the  van  of  the  Sacramentarians  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  in  the  whole 
range  of  ecclesiastical  history.  Berengar  of 
Tours  *  lived  ninety  years,  and  died  in  good 
repute  with  the  Church.  Men  were  burned 
at  the  stake  before  his  time,  in  his  time  and 
after  his  time,  who  gave  the  hierarchy  infin- 
itely less  trouble  than  he  gave  it.  The  whole 
eleventh  century  was  his  century,  theologi- 


i.   Born  998;  died  1088. 

(SO 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

cally  considered,  and  the  twelfth  was  under 
his  shadow.  Condemned  over  and  over  again, 
he  absented  himself  from  councils  and  synods 
when  he  could,  refused  to  answer  if  obliged 
to  be  present,  and  when  in  peril  of  his  life 
recanted,2  confessedly  under  duress,  only  to 
renew  his  preaching  as  soon  as  he  was  free. 
Twice,  at  least,  he  went  to  Rome,  argued  his 
case  before  the  Pope  in  council,  and  escaped 
with  his  life,  and  even  with  letters  of  protec- 
tion 3  to  secular  princes,  who  were  more  viru- 
lent against  him  than  the  most  bigoted  of 
churchmen.  For  a  half  century  he  main- 
tained his  position  in  face  of  the  ablest  con- 
troversialists of  the  time;  and  this  he  did 
almost  alone,  for  his  followers,  though  deeply 


2.  ERDMANN,  1.  c.,  I.,  p.  301 :   "  For  this  double  sub- 
jection to  the  fear  of  men  he  blamed  himself  until  his 
death." 

3.  Dedit  ipsi  [Berengario]  et  alias  literas  ad  fideles 
universes,  quibus  ipsum  haereticum  appellari  prohibuit. 
NOEL  ALEXANDRE,  1.  c.,  Vol.  XIII.,  p.  486. 

(52) 


BERENGAR  OF  TOURS 

attached  to  him,  developed  no  great  minds  to 
sustain  him  in  his  arduous  conflict. 

Berengar  finished  his  life  where  he  began 
it,  at  Tours;  but,  meanwhile,  he  had  dissemi- 
nated 4  his  opinions  over  Normandy,  Anjou, 
Provence  and  Western  Germany.  He  very 
nearly  persuaded  the  Duke  of  Normandy,5 
William  the  Conqueror,  to  come  out  on  his 
side,  while  Lanfranc,6  who  was  to  be  the  first 
primate  of  all  England  under  the  Norman 
power,  was  long  suspected  of  favoring  his 
views,  and  only  dispelled  this  suspicion  by  a 
ruthless  attack  on  him.  His  bitterest  foe  was 
Fulk,7  Count  of  Anjou,  who  would  unques- 
tionably have  burned  him,  had  it  not  been  for 


4.  Berengarius  plane  quamvis  ipse  sententiam  cor- 
rexerit,  omnes  tamen,  quos  ex  totis  terris  depravaverat, 
convertere   nequivit.     WILLIAM    of    MALMESBURY,    Ed. 
HARDY,  p.  465,  quoted  also  by  Alexandre. 

5.  ALEXANDRE,  VIII.,  p.  474. 

6.  Ibid,  p.  467. 

7.  This  was  Fulk  the  Fourth,  great-grandfather  of 
Henry  the  Second. 

(53) 


direct  and  personal  commands  from  the  Pope, 
Gregory  VII.,8  who  was  not  to  be  trifled  with. 
But  Fulk's  enmity  is  a  significant  fact  in  the 
evolution  of  the  Graal  romance,  for  it  made 
the  real  presence  a  family  question  with  Henry 
the  Second.  A  great  part  of  the  empire  over 
which  the  King  of  England  claimed  sover- 
eignty in  the  twelfth  century  was  saturated 
with  very  recent  and  very  vigorous  tradi- 
tions of  Berengar  and  his  teachings,  while 
the  King's  own  tradition  as  a  prince  of  the 
House  of  Anjou  made  it  a  point  of  honor  with 
him  to  oppose  Sacramentarianism  wherever 
he  found  it.  And  this  he  did  with  severitv. 


8.  Gallios  repetenti  Berengario,  Gregorius  VII., 
apostolicae  protectionis  literas  dedit  ad  Redulphum  Turo- 
nensem  archiepiscopum,  et  Eusebium  episcopum  Andega- 
vensem  ut  eum  sua  vice  a  Fulconis  comitis  Andegavensis 
infestationibus  tuerenter.  NOEL  ALEXANDRE,  XIII.,  p.  486. 


(54) 


VI 

THE  REAL  PRESENCE 

While  Normandy  and  Anjou  were  troubled 
by  heresies,  England  was  free  from  serious 
religious  disturbance,  and  to  the  close  of  the 
twelfth  century  remained,  from  the  dogmatic 
point  of  view,  a  model  of  faithfulness.  Hume1 
mentions  but  one  eruption  of  heresy  in  Henry 
the  Second's  time,  and  this  was  confined  to  a 
group  of  foreign  wanderers.  Walter  Map,2 
who  knew  a  good  deal  about  heretics  and 
rather  liked  some  of  them,3  was  fain  to  find 


1.  Probably  Hume  refers  to  the  incident  given  in 
detail  by  Map. 

2.  Map,  in  De  Nugis  Curialium,  gave  a  long  account 
of  the  Waldenses,  the  result  of  his  own  personal  inves- 
tigation at  Rome.     P.  64,  seq. 

3.  Speaking    of    the    Waldenses,    Map    remarked : 
"  Sunt  certe  temporibus   nostris,  licet  a  nobis  damnati 

(55) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

them  for  the  most  part  in  his  frequent  jour- 
neys to  the  continent.  He  particularly  men- 
tioned the  fact  that  of  the  Publicans 4  or 
Paterini,  a  widespread  sect  of  Paulician  origin, 
only  sixteen  had  been  found  in  England,  and 
these  had  been  promptly  driven  out  by  the 
King.  Among  these  Publicans  was  to  be 
found  the  sole  open  outbreak  in  the  Eng- 
land of  those  days  against  the  accepted  doc- 
trine of  the  Eucharist.  Walter  also  notes  the 
fact  that  Henry  was  equally  energetic  in  his 
efforts  to  put  down  heresy  in  the  parts  of  his 
empire  outside  5  of  England.  If  he  desired 


et  derisi,  qui  fidem  servare  velint,  etsi  ponantur  ad 
rationem,  ut  dudum  ponant  animas  suas  pro  pastore  suo 
domino  Jesu ;  sed  nescio  quo  zelo  ductis  vel  conductis." 
P.  65. 

4.  In   Anglia   nondum   venerunt   nisi    sedecim,   qui 
praecepto   regis   Henrici   secundi  adusti   et  virgis  caesi 
disparuerunt  in  Normanniam.     P.  62.    Non  accipiunt  de 
corpora  Christi  et  sanguine,  pane  benedictp  nos  derident. 
P.  61. 

5.  Rex  noster  etiam  Henricus  secundus  ab  omnibus 
terris  suis  arcet  haereseos  novae  damnosissimam  sectam, 

etc.     P.  60. 

(56) 


THE  REAL  PRESENCE 

to  hold  England  up  as  a  model  to  the  other 
regions  under  his  sway,  how  better  could  this 
be  done  than  by  showing  that  it  had  once 
been  the  resting  place  of  the  tryblion  out  of 
which  the  Lord  and  his  disciples  had  eaten 
the  Last  Supper,  and  that  the  quest  of  this 
sacred  and  miraculous  vessel  had  in  remote 
times  absorbed  the  attention  of  British  war- 
riors? Thus,  in  addition  to  other  political 
and  ecclesiastical  aims,  the  Arthur  tales,  by 
the  conditions  of  the  times, —  twelfth  century 
times,  remember,  not  the  times  of  the  real 
Arthur,  a  point  which  is  regularly  ignored  by 
many  persons  who  write  on  the  subject, — 
were  directed  to  the  strenuous  support  of  that 
doctrine  of  the  Church  which  was  most  prom- 
inent in  the  twelfth  century.6  For  the  sake 
of  illustration  a  single  passage  may  be  taken 


6.  A  single  glance  at  any  of  the  great  ecclesiastical 
histories  will  show  that  transubstantiation  was  the  one 
theme  of  speculative  interest.  It  rivaled  even  the  quarrel 
between  the  empire  and  the  papacy. 

(57) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

from  Map's  7  story  of  the  Graal  as  Englished 
by  the  translators  who  gave  themselves  col- 
lectively the  pen  name,  Sir  Thomas  Malory: 

"And  anon  light  a  voice  among  them 
said,  '  They  that  ought  not  to  sit  at  the  table 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  arise;  for  now  shall 
very  knights  be  fed/  so  they  went  thence,  all 
save  King  Pelleas  and  Eliazar  his  son,  the 
which  were  holy  men,  and  a  maid  which  was 
his  niece:  and  so  these  three  fellows  [Sir  Gala- 
had, Sir  Perceval  and  Sir  Bors]  and  they 
three  were  there,  and  no  more.  Anon  they 
saw  knights  all  armed  come  in  at  the  hall 
door,  and  did  off  their  helms  and  their  har- 
ness, and  said  unto  Sir  Galahad,  '  Sir,  we 
have  bled  sore  to  be  with  you  at  this  table, 
where  the  holy  meat  shall  be  parted.'  Then 
said  he,  'Ye  be  welcome,  but  whence  be  ye?' 
So  three  of  them  said  they  were  of  Gaul,8  and 


7.  Even  if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  translators  here 
used  a  poetical  original,  still  the  substance  is  of  Map's 
invention. 

8.  Gaul  was  conquered  by  Arthur,  according  to  the 
legend  in  Geoffrey's  history. 

(58) 


THE  REAL  PRESENCE 

other  three  said  they  were  of  Ireland,9  and 
other  three  said  they  were  of  Denmark.10  So 
as  they  sate  thus,  there  came  a  bed  of  wood 
out  of  a  chamber,  the  which  four  gentle- 
women brought;  and  in  the  bed  lay  a  good 
man  sick,  and  a  crown  of  gold  upon  his  head, 
and  there  in  the  midst  of  the  place  they  sat 
him  down  and  went  their  way  again.  Then 
he  lift  up  his  head  and  said,  '  Sir  Galahad, 
Knight,  ye  be  welcome,  for  much  have  I 
desired  your  coming,  for  in  which  pain  and 
anguish  as  ye  see  have  I  been  long;  but  now 
I  trust  to  God  that  the  time  is  come  that  my 
pain  shall  be  allayed,  that  I  shall  pass  out  of 
this  world,  so  as  it  was  promised  me  long 
ago.'  Therewith  a  voice  said,  '  There  be  two 
among  you  that  be  not  in  the  quest  of  the 
Sancgreal,  and  therefore  depart  ye.' ai  Then 

9.  Ireland  was  invaded  by  Arthur  in  fiction,  and 
was  now  claimed  by  Henry  in  fact. 

10.  Both  Norway  and  Denmark  were  said  to  have 
been   overrun  by  Arthur's   armies.     It   is   curious   that 
nobody  has  dwelt  in  detail  on  the  manifest  fact  that 
Geoffrey  appropriated  in  these  affairs  the  biography  of 
Alfred. 

11.  That  is,  a  new  test  was  to  be  set  up  of  fitness 

(59) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

King  Pelleas  and  his  son  departed;  and  there- 
with it  seemed  them  that  there  came  a  man 
and  four  angels  from  heaven  clothed  in  the 
likeness  of  bishops,  and  [the  man]  had  a  cross 
in  his  hand:  and  the  four  angels  bear  him  up 
in  a  chair,  and  set  him  down  before  the  table 
of  silver,  whereupon  the  Sancgreal  was,  and 
it  seemed  that  he  had  in  the  midst  of  his  fore- 
head letters  that  said,  '  See  ye,  here,  Joseph, 
the  first  bishop  of  Christendom,  the  same 
which  our  Lord  succoured  in  the  city  of 
Sarras  in  the  spiritual  place.'  Then  the 
knights  marvelled,  for  that  bishop  was  dead 
more  than  three  hundred  years  before.  '  Oh, 
knights,'  said  he,  '  marvel  not,  for  I  was  some- 
time an  earthly  man.'  With  that  they  heard 
the  chamber  door  open,  and  there  they  saw 
angels,  and  two  bear  candles  of  wax,  and 
the  third  a  towel,12  and  the  fourth  a  spear,13 
which  bled  marvellously,  that  the  drops  fell 


to  partake  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  According  to  Arthur 
romancers,  the  Eucharist  should  have  been  confined  to 
the  sacerdotal  and  military  orders. 

12.  An  allusion  to  the  Veronica. 

13.  This  allusion  appears  to  be  to  Longinus,  men- 

(60) 


THE  REAL  PRESENCE 

within  a  bier,  the  which  he  held  in  his  other 
hand.  And  then  they  set  their  candles  upon 
the  table,  and  the  third  put  the  towel  upon 
the  vessel,  and  the  fourth  set  the  holy  spear 
even  upright  upon  the  vessel.  And  then  the 
bishop  made  semblance  as  though  he  would 
have  gone  to  the  consecration  of  the  mass; 
and  then  he  took  a  wafer,  which  was  made  in 
the  likeness  of  bread,  and  at  the  lifting  up 
there  came  a  figure  in  the  likeness  of  a  child, 
and  the  visage  was  as  red  and  as  bright  as 
any  fire,  and  smote  itself  into  that  bread,  so 
that  they  all  saw  the  bread  was  formed  of 
fleshy  man." 

It  may  be  left  to  experts  in  ecclesiastical 
history  to  say  whether  or  not  this  narrative 
could  have  been  invented  before  the  middle 
or  after  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century. 

In  accordance  with  the  usual  revulsion  in 
human  affairs,  the  conditions  of  the  thirteenth 


tioned  in  the  Gospel  of  Nicodemus  as  the  soldier  who 
pierced  the  side  of  Christ  with  his  lance. 
(61) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

century  were  foreign  to  the  production  of  a 
work  like  the  Graal  story  in  its  original  form. 
The  reform  of  Gregory  had  spent  its  force.14 
The  high  ideals  with  which  the  Templars  and 
Hospitallers  began  were  forgotten.15  Eccle- 
siasticism  was  now  dominated  by  the  conflict- 
ing orders  of  St.  Dominic  and  St.  Francis.16 
The  Franciscans,  particularly  through  the 
eloquence  of  the  youthful  and  enthusiastic 
Duns  Scotus,17  and  mindful  of  the  victory  of 


14.  In  the  case  of  Innocent  III.  and  those  who  fol- 
lowed him,  there  was  hardly  a  pretense  of  the  stern  recti- 
tude of  Gregory  VII.     In  a  poetical  satire  respecting  the 
quarrel   of  Innocent   III.   with  the   Emperor  Otto  the 
Fourth,  which  was  probably  written  by  an  Englishman, 
Rome  is  represented  as  saying  to  the  Pope: 

"  Innocentius  es,  ita  quod  non  privet  in  immo, 
Augmentet  potius,  valdeque  Nocentius  esse 
Dicaris,  quia  totius  mundi  es  nocumentum." 
— Liebnitz,  1.  c.,  Tom.  II.,  p.  532. 

15.  See  Map's  essays  on  these  orders,  as  previously 
cited. 

1 6.  This  domination  began  in  popular  favor,  but  it 
was  strengthened  by  the  victory  of  the  friars  over  the 
universities. 

17.  The  satire  of  Butler  in  Hudibras  has  given  Duns 

(62) 


THE  REAL  PRESENCE 

John  of  Damascus  in  the  East,18  began  the 
age-long  effort  to  force  the  dogma  of  the  im- 
maculate conception  upon  the  Church,  while 
the  Dominicans  arrayed  themselves  in  a  fierce 
opposition  19  that  was  not  to  be  overcome  till 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.20  The 
university  era  was  fairly  opened,21  and  criti- 
cism of  the  doctrine  of  the  real  presence,  so 
far  as  it  became  public,  was  confined  to  the 
subtleties  of  scholastic  philosophers.22  Her- 


Scotus  a  bad  name.  But  he  was  a  remarkable  man, 
especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  he  died  at  the  early 
age  of  forty-three. 

18.  John  of  Damascus  is  represented  in  the  Roman 
Breviary  with  only  two  discourses;  but  these  suffice  to 
show  how  he  identified  his  name  with  the  homage  to  the 
Virgin.     In  the  Greek  Church  his  renown  is  very  great. 

19.  The  scandal  of  the  fraudulent  miracles  at  Berne 
in  1507  belongs  to  the  history  of  this  controversy. 

20.  At    the    (Ecumenical    Council    summoned    by 
Pius  IX.  in  the  Vatican,  1870. 

21.  RASHDALL,  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  dates  the  Studium  Generate  at  Oxford  1167,  and 
Cambridge  1209. 

22.  Many  doctrines  condemned  as  heretical  in  the 
thirteenth  century  originated  with  university  professors. 

(63) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

esy  took  up  new  grievances.  Not  that  the 
subject  of  transubstantiation  was  forgotten. 
In  fact,  as  the  reformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century  demonstrated,  nearly  the  half  of 
Christendom  was  the  mortal  foe  of  the 
dogma.  But  it  ceased  to  be  a  subject  of  im- 
mediate interest  and  general  discussion,  such 
as  it  had  been  for  the  better  part  of  two  cen- 
turies. 

Hence  the  story  of  the  Graal  in  any  of  its 
forms,  whether  as  to  its  origin  and  migra- 
tions, or  as  an  object  of  knightly  quest,  could 
no  more  have  been  imagined  in  the  thirteenth 
century  than  in  the  twentieth.  That  the  story 
was  capable  of  being  worked  over  is  another 
question.  It  was  rewritten  then  and  after- 
wards, and  no  doubt  will  continue  to  be  done 
anew  to  the  end  of  time. 


(64) 


VII 
WALTER  MAP 

If  the  Arthur  stories  had  been  in  the  first 
instance  a  natural  outcrop  of  the  folk  spirit, 
it  is  not  credible  that  they  would  have  begun 
with  the  super-imposed  graal  episode.  More 
likely  they  would  have  opened  with  the  tale 
of  Tristan,  which,  be  it  of  British  or  of  conti- 
nental origin,  is  as  thorough  a  folk  product  as 
the  ballads  of  Robin  Hood.  But  with  the 
graal  the  cycle  began,  and  the  only  ques- 
tion is,  who  was  the  first  to  write  the  graal 
episode  in  any  of  its  forms?  Wolfram  von 
Eschenbach  is  responsible  for  the  figure  of  a 
Provencal  troubadour,  or  rather  joglar,  whom 
he  calls  Kyot,  supposed  to  mean  Guy  or 
Guyot.  But  Provencal  poets  did  not  com- 
pose long  narrative  poems  until  their  art  fell 
(65) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

into  its  decline.  Moreover,  they  did  not  write 
in  Languedoil.  If  it  is  necessary  to  contrive 
an  hypothesis  making  this  Languedocian  of 
Wolfram's  an  Angevin  or  a  Northern  French 
trouvere,  he  might  just  as  well  be  dropped 
at  the  outset  as  a  mere  name.1  Wolfram,  as 
some  of  his  poetry  showed  to  an  expert  like 
Hueffer,2  was  well  versed  in  the  language  and 
metrical  art  of  Provence.  But  his  German 
contemporaries  were  not.  He  could  tell  them 
anything  he  liked.  Very  likely  the  name 
Kyot  represents  something  very  different 
from  Guyot.  It  is  no  great  stretch  of  prob- 
abilities in  palaeography  to  account  for  it  as 

I.  His  existence  is  of  no  importance  either  way.  If 
he  was  real,  he  was  as  much  addicted  to  the  cult  of  the 
House  of  Anjou  as  Map  himself,  and  if  he  is  a  mere 
figment  of  the  imagination,  he  leaves  no  hiatus  in  the 
tradition  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  legends. 

•2.  "  Hence  we  find  that  the  wonderfully  beautiful 
morning  songs,  evidently  written  in  imitation  of  Pro- 
venc,al  models  by  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,  the  great 
mediaeval  German  poet,  are  actually  called  Wachter- 
lieder,  or  sentinel  songs."  HUEFFER,  The  Troubadours, 
p.  87. 

(66) 


WALTER  MAP 

a  reading  of  some  abbreviation  of  Walter, 
Gualtier,  such  as  Guat  or  Gyat.  Outside  of 
Wolfram's  poem  Kyot  is  unknown.  The  only 
authors  of  Arthur  romances  before  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century  are  Map,3  who  has  already 
been  mentioned,  Robert  de  Borron,4  and 
Chrestien  de  Troyes.5  There  need  be  no  hes- 


3.  The  tradition  of  Map's  authorship,  which  had 
been   attacked,   was   rehabilitated   once   for  all   by   Sir 
Frederick  Madden  and  Paulin  Paris. 

4.  Who  was  secretary  to  Gautier  de  Montfaucon, 
and  as  he  could  write,  most  likely  a  cleric.     He  went  to 
Palestine  as  a  crusader,  probably  under  Richard  Coeur 
de  Lion  or  Philip  Augustus,  and  his  writings  appear  to 
have  preceded  that  event.     There  was  no  age  limit  in 
the  crusading  hosts.     The  discrepancy  in  style  and  mat- 
ter that  is  observed  by  some  critics  between  the  opening 
parts  and  the  conclusion  of  works  attributed  to  him  is 
probably   accounted    for  by   supposing   that   they   were 
begun  in  youth  and  finished  in  old  age.    This  suppo- 
sition is  also  the  only  way  of  explaining  the  known  fact 
that  he  was  looked  on  as  a  contemporary  by  three  gen- 
erations of  poets  and  romancers. 

5.  Chrestien  died  in  1181.     [Some  say  he  was  still 
alive  in  1191.]     The  opinion  that  the  Perceval  was  his 
last  work  may  be  disputed  on  the  ground  that  he  also 

(67) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

itation  in  accepting  the  theory  already  offered 
by  others  that  Borron  was  a  collaborator  with 
Map.  It  is  equally  possible  that  Chrestien 
was  influenced  by  Map  in  his  last  work,  The 
Perceval,  which  must  have  been  interrupted 
by  his  death,  as  he  left  it  unfinished.  His 
other  pieces  are  of  minor  importance. 

From  1162  till  the  close  of  the  century, 
Map 6  was  the  foremost  man  of  letters  in 
England,  and  his  relation  to  the  court  put 
him  in  a  position  to  tell  others  what  to  write. 
He  was  as  well  known  in  the  continental  parts 
of  Henry's  empire  as  he  was  at  home.  Map's 
position  as  overseer  in  the  whole  affair  ac- 
counts for  what  would  otherwise  be  unac- 
countable —  for  example,  the  dragging  of 

left  Le  Chevalier  au  Lion,  a  poem  on  Lancelot,  unfin- 
ished.   But  at  least  the  effort  to  compose  two  elaborate 
poems  at  the  same  time  gives  an  impression  of  some 
external  influence  that  required  the  poet  to  be  in  haste. 
6.    If  the  question  were  one  of  literary  style,  Map 
would  have  to  give  way  to  John  of  Salisbury.     But  John 
made  far  less  noise  among  his  contemporaries  than  Map. 
(68) 


WALTER  MAP 

the  graal  motive  into  the  Perceval  romance, 
which  without  this  addition  is  a  manifest 
variant  under  Hahn's  famous  Aryan  Expo- 
sure and  Return  formula.7  Much  as  Map 
wrote,  he  said  of  himself  that  he  was  more  of 
a  talker  than  a  writer.8  With  this  confession 
is  to  be  linked  the  fact  that  his  contributions 
to  the  cycle  of  Arthur  romances  were  in  prose. 
We  must  remember  that  verse  was  through- 
out the  mediaeval  period  reckoned  as  the 
vehicle  of  fiction,  while  prose  carried  with  it 
a  conviction  of  truth.  On  this  prejudice  was 
based  the  dislike  which  Joseph  of  Exeter,9 
a  few  years  after  Map's  time,  professed  for 
Homer,  and  his  preference  for  Dictys  and 
Dares.  Godfrey  of  Viterbo,  in  his  Pantheon,10 


7.  The  principal  variation  being  that  the  hero  is  not 
exposed,  but  concealed,  to  evade  the  fate  that  awaits  him. 

8.  "You  have  written  much,  I  have  talked  a  great 
deal,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said  to  Gerald  de  Barri. 

g.   This  poet  should  be  mentioned  with  respect.     He 

furnished  the  motto  for  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King. 

10.   This  elaborate  work,  a  very  creditable  perform- 

(69) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

a  compendium  of  universal  history,  alter- 
nating prose  with  verse,  was  careful  to  put 
certain  parts  in  prose  only,  lest  in  metre  they 
should  be  disputed.  The  prose  romancers 
of  the  thirteenth  century  discredited  their 
poetical  predecessors  by  the  same  argument,11 
while  in  the  very  act  of  filching  their  material. 
From  these  instances  it  is  plain  that  to  a  work 
put  forth  almost  in  the  form  of  a  supplement 
to  the  New  Testament  history  rhythm  and 
rhyme  would  have  been  fatal.  They  would 
have  been  considered  prima  facie  evidence  of 
forgery.  So  the  Arthur  stories,  begun,  as 
they  were,  with  what  was  properly  the  con- 
clusion, also  violated  the  natural  order  by 
being  first  set  down  in  prose  before  they  got 
into  verse. 

That   tradition   is   certainly   trustworthy, 


ance  for  the  times,  is  to  be  read  in  STRUVIUS'  edition  of 
PISTORIUS,  Rerum  Gerntanicarum  Scriptores,  Tom.  II. 

n.    WILSON'S   DUNLOP,   History  of  Prose  Fiction, 
Vol.  I.,  p.  146. 

(70) 


WALTER  MAP 

since  it  corresponds  to  the  necessities  of  the 
case,  which  attributes  to  Map  12  the  Quest  of 
the  Graal,  the  Book  of  Lancelot  du  Lac  and 
the  Death  of  Arthur.  It  is  also  probable  that 
to  him  is  due  the  graal  history  in  both  its 
shorter  and  longer  forms.  Borron  turned 
these  into  verse  and  wrote  the  Book  of  Mer- 
lin. Lucas  de  Cast 13  began  The  Tristan,  and 
Chrestien  The  Perceval,  in  which  the  Angevin 
genealogical  and  political  motives  were  a 
prominent  feature.  But  the  moral,  ecclesi- 
astical and  political  motives  of  the  cycle  are 
practically  complete  in  the  works  of  Map. 

It  is  objected  that  Map  wrote  in  Latin. 
This  is,  as  Wright  has  remarked,  a  misappre- 
hension,14 so  far  as  the  Arthur  stories  are  con- 
cerned. It  is  also  objected  that  if  Wolfram 
owed  his  original  to  a  priest,  he  would  have 


12.  WRIGHT,  Biographia  Britannica  Literaria,  Vol. 
II.,  p.  303. 

13.  Ibid,  p.  311. 

14.  Ibid,  p.  304. 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

given  a  priestly  title  and  would  not  have 
spoken  of  Master  Kyot.15  But  it  happens 
that  Map,  though  he  rose  to  the  dignity  of 
an  archdeacon  in  the  Church,  betrayed  all  his 
life  a  fondness  for  the  title  of  Master.16  It 
was  evidently  the  habitual  form  of  address 
mutual  between  him  and  his  friend,  Giraldus 
Cambrensis,  and  he  is  called  Maistre  Gautiers 
Map 17  in  the  concluding  paragraph  of  the 
ancient  French  prose  Mart  Artus. 


15.  "  Si   se   taist   ore   Maistre    Gautiers    Map   del' 
estoire  de   Lancelot,"   etc.,   from   a   manuscript   in   the 
British  Museum  quoted  by  WRIGHT. 

"  Les  livres  que  Maistres  Gautiers  Maup  fist," 
PAULIN  PARIS,  Les  Manuscripts  de  la  Bibliotheque  du 
Roi,  Tom.  I.,  p.  139. 

"  Le  livre  de  Missire  Lancelot  du  Lac  lequel  trans- 
lata  Maistre  Gautier  Map,"  Ibid,  p.  147. 

16.  No  doubt  the  title  in  Map's  case  is  associated 
with  the  practice  of  the  universities  which  made  Master 
a  title  in  the  theological  faculty  and  Doctor  a  title  for 
a  graduate  in  canon  law.    RASHDALL,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I., 
p.  21. 

17.  See  also  the  title  repeated  in  other  copies  of  the 
French  romances  as  cited  in  a  previous  note. 

(72) 


WALTER  MAP 

While  Map  could  easily  and  frankly  assert 
his  authorship  of  the  Lancelot,  the  Quest,  and 
the  Morte  a" Arthur,  he  could  not,  nor  could 
anybody,  claim  the  original  prose  history  of 
the  Graal  as  his  own.18  This  was  deliberately 
meant  to  make  its  way  among  the  apocrypha, 
and,  if  possible,  to  attain  an  inspired  or  semi- 
inspired  rank.  But  the  actual  inspiration, 
coming  from  the  court  of  England,  could 
only  be  breathed  upon  a  man  of  letters  who 
was  also  a  courtier,  and  that  was  Map.  No 
doubt  his  work  was  hasty  and  confused,  a 
memorandum  rather  than  a  finished  piece  of 
literature  —  in  fact,  all  the  earliest  Arthurian 
prose  has  the  look  of  being  tumbled  together 
for  the  use  of  writers  rather  than  as  a  perma- 
nent gift  to  the  reading  world.  Even  in  Latin 

18.  The  usual  plan  with  apocrypha  was  to  attribute 
them  to  some  well-known  personage  of  primitive  Chris- 
tian times,  and  then  to  invent  a  more  or  less  plausible 
account  of  the  preservation  of  the  manuscript.  In  the 
present  case  the  Saviour  himself  was  made  responsible 
for  the  fiction. 

(73) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

Map  told  stories,  often  very  good  ones,  in  the 
same  huddled,  promiscuous  style,  as  any  one 
may  find  by  looking  into  De  Nugis  Curialium. 


(74) 


VIII 
WOLFRAM  VON  ESCHENBACH 

To  find  a  writer  who  was  capable  of 
making  genuine  literature  out  of  the  stories 
of  Arthur's  knights  and  the  graal,  one  has  to 
wait  a  whole  generation  and  then  turn  to  Ger- 
many. Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,1  though 
only  a  half  century  later  than  the  earliest  of 
the  Arthurian  romancers,  belonged  to  a  time 
when  the  overweening  ambition  of  a  Planta- 
genet  Count-King  of  Anjou  and  England  had 
already  become  a  matter  of  indifference.  He 
merely  finds  Angevin  tradition  prominent  in 
the  fiction  as  it  came  to  him,  and  is  careful 
to  preserve  what  gives  an  air  of  verity  to  the 


i.    Lived  until  1220.     His  poem  can  now  be  read  in 
an  English  translation  by  Miss  Weston. 

(75) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

narrative.  The  tempest  of  controversy  over 
the  question  of  the  real  presence  has  passed 
by.2  The  quarrel  between  the  powers  spir- 
itual and  temporal  has  also  fallen  into  what 
may  be  called  its  chronic  state,3  as  distin- 
guished from  the  acute  outbreaks  of  the 
eleventh  century  and  the  twelfth.  Politicians 
may  theoretically  be  Thomists  on  this  point; 
practically  they  are  Ockamists,4  and  such 
they  have  remained  from  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury to  the  twentieth.  Wolfram,  therefore, 
found  nothing  to  interfere  with  his  view  of 
the  Arthur  theme  as  the  material  of  a  work 
of  art.  Naturally,  being  a  man  of  genius, 


2.  If  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  had  a  preference  for 
any  sacrament,  it  must  have  been  baptism.     He  certainly 
mentions  that  subject  at  every  opportunity. 

3.  In   fact   the  papacy  never  again   recovered  the 
position  it  had  under  Innocent  III. 

4.  Thomas  Aquinas  imagined  a  theocratic  solution 
for  the  dualism  of  politics.    But  Ockam,  who  was  a 
logician  pure  and  simple,  saw  that  the  theory  of  spiritual 
supremacy   was   impossible.    The  physical   necessity   of 
human  life  is  against  it. 

(76) 


WOLFRAM  VON  ESCHENBACH 

he  produced  the  first  writing  worthy  of  the 
subject.  Proud  as  he  was  of  his  familiarity 
with  the  languages  of  France,5  it  can  not 
be  believed  that  anything  previously  written 
escaped  him,  and  yet  it  is  only  here  and  there 
that  he  descended  to  mere  translation.  He 
cast  aside  the  colorless  and  shadowy  Galahad, 
the  perverted  Lancelot,  the  maddened  Tris- 
tan, left  Arthur  an  almost  motionless  figure 
in  the  background,  and  only  preserved  the 
egotist  Gawain  6  as  a  foil  to  the  evolution  of 
the  simpleton  Parzival,  the  man  without  learn- 
ing, like  Wolfram  himself,  but  of  native  force, 
of  latent  spirituality,  and  of  manifest  destiny. 
Doubtless  there  was  something  in  this  of  the 
envy  of  a  man  wholly  unlettered,  as  Wolfram 
was,7  whose  education  was  all  by  experience 

5.  His  works  reveal  this  fact. 

6.  Even  thus,  Wolfram's  Gawain  is  a  finer  char- 
acter than  the  earlier  romances  had  made  of  him. 

7.  There  is  some  reason  to  suspect  that  Wolfram, 
like  the  troubadour  Uc  de  St.  Cyr,  rather  exaggerated 
his  lack  of  book  learning. 

(77) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

and  word  of  mouth,  provoked  at  the  spread 
of  the  new-fangled  university  learning  and  the 
arrogance  of  its  votaries.  But  there  was  also 
the  keen  insight  of  a  man  of  genius,  who  saw 
that  in  the  cycle  of  French  poems  and  prose 
tales,  all  the  heroes  could  be  impersonated 
by  a  single  figure.  All  that  Galahad,  all  that 
Lancelot  achieved,  all  that  Bors  achieved, 
Parzival  also  achieved,  with  the  added  inter- 
est of  his  individual  story.  Instinct,  preju- 
dice, conviction,  common  sense  and  poetic 
insight  all  converged  to  the  certainty  that  all 
there  was  in  the  Arthur  cycle  of  any  epic 
value  could  be  coordinated  with  the  single 
figure  of  Parzival. 


(78) 


IX 

WOLFRAM  AND  WAGNER 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  compassion  as 
a  characteristic  of  Parsifal  was  original  with 
Wagner.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  It  is  true 
that  Wagner,  owing  to  his  profound  interest 
and  prominent  share  in  the  war  against  vivi- 
section at  the  time  when  the  Parsifal  drama 
began  to  absorb  his  creative  powers,  obtained 
a  higher  appreciation  of  Schopenhauer's  defi- 
nition of  pity  as  the  central  fact  in  morals. 
But  Schopenhauer  himself  was  witness  to  an 
earlier  humane  movement,  which  was  crowned 
in  England  by  laws  for  the  prevention  of  cru- 
elty to  animals,  and  especially  by  the  noble 
poem  of  Coleridge,  The  Ancient  Mariner.1 


I.   Written  in  1798. 

(79) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

There  is  a  distinct  analogy  between  the  shoot- 
ing of  the  albatross,  as  imagined  by  Coleridge, 
and  the  shooting  of  the  swan  in  Parsifal,2 
even  to  the  unconsciousness  of  the  cruelty 
involved  in  the  needless  crime.  But  Wolfram 


2.   Compare  these  two  passages,  the  first  from  Cole- 
ridge's poem,  the  second  from  Wagner's  drama: 
"  God  save  thee,  Ancient  Mariner ! 

From  the  fiends  that  plague  thee  thus ! 
Why  look'st  thou  so?    With  my  cross-bow 
I  shot  the  albatross. 

"  And  the  good  south  wind  still  blew  behind, 

But  no  sweet  bird  did  follow, 
Nor  any  day  for  food  or  play 

Came  to  the  mariner's  hollo." 
Gurnemans.  Bist  du's  der  diesen  Schwan  erlegte? 
Parsifal.  Gewiss!    Im  Fluge  treff  ich,  was  fliegt! 
Gurnemans.  Du  thatest  das?    Und  bangt'  es  dich 
nicht   vor    der    That?   .   .   .   Was   that    dir    der   treue 
Schwan?   .   .   .   Er  war  uns  hold:  was  ist  er  nun  dir? 
Hier  schau'  her!  —  hier  trafst  du  inn,  da  starrt  noch 
das  Blut, —  matt  hangen  die  Fluge!  das  Schneegefieder 
dunkel  befleckt,  gebrochen  das  Aug?  —  siehst  du   den 
Blick?    Wirst  deiner  Sundenthat  du  inne?     Sag  knab', 
erkennst  du  deine  grosse  Schuld?    Wie  konntest  du' sie 
begeh'n  ? 

Parsifal.  Ich  wusste  sie  nicht. 
(80) 


WOLFRAM  AND  WAGNER 

thought  of  pity  3  as  the  solution  of  the  doubt 
and  indecision  and  rebellion  against  God 
which  marked  the  immature  stage  in  the 
career  of  his  Parzival.  His  defect,  as  com- 
pared with  Wagner,  is  that  he  did  not  grasp 
the  whole  thought  nor  extend  it  to  all  living 
things.4  But  his  thought,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is 
original  with  him.  In  the  poem  of  Chrestien 
of  Troyes,  the  graal  is  merely  a  miraculous 
dish,  through  which,  by  means  of  the  ques- 
tion suggested  at  sight  of  it,  the  Fisher-King 
is  to  be  healed  of  his  wound.5  In  Wolfram 
the  graal  becomes  a  symbol  and  touchstone 
of  moral  purity,  and  the  graal  community, 


3.  See  KARL  PANNIER'S  introduction  to  his  transla- 
tion of  Parzival  into  modern  German. 

4.  The  thought  would  have  been  impossible  to  the 
mediaeval  German  in  a  country  still  only  partially  tamed. 
An  American  pioneer  in  the  early  years  of  the  last  cen- 
tury  would    have   had    very   little    sympathy   with    the 
notions  of  either  Coleridge,  Schopenhauer  or  Wagner. 

5.  The  poem  of  Chrestien  of  Troyes  is  unfortu- 
nately not  yet  translated  into  English. 

(81) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM. 

with  its  knighthood,  appears  as  the  upholder 
of  the  Christian  ideal  of  a  good  life.  In  Chres- 
tien's  poem  the  question  is  merely  an  external 
act:  "  Whom  serve  they  with  the  graal?"  In 
Wolfram  the  question,  at  the  sight  of  the  suf- 
ferings of  Amfortas,  whose  figure  is  unknown 
to  Chrestien,  becomes  a  duty  the  omission  of 
which  betrays  Parzival's  lack  of  sympathy  and 
of  the  moral  maturity  which  would  make  him 
worthy  of  the  graal  kingdom. 

The  whole  of  that  searching  of  the  heart 
by  which  Wolfram  aims  in  the  contrast  be- 
tween Parzival  ignorant,  egotistic,  rebellious, 
and  Parzival  penitent,  sympathetic  and  spirit- 
ually alert,  is  unknown  to  Chrestien,  and  is 
certainly  misunderstood  and  misinterpreted 
by  Wagner.  In  Wolfram  Parzival's  conver- 
sion is  a  divine  work.6  In  Wagner  it  is  the 


6.   In  fact,  Wolfram  would  have  thoroughly  under- 
stood the  meaning  of  the  word  "  conversion  "  implied  in 
an  anecdote  of  John  Larkin  Lincoln.     "  I  suppose,"  said 
a  German  professor  to  him,  "  you  can  tell  us  the  hour 
(82) 


WOLFRAM  AND  WAGNER 

result  of  a  woman's  kiss  T  given  with  anything 
but  virginal  modesty.     Psychically  Wagner's 


and  the  minute  when  you  were  converted  ?"  "  Yes," 
replied  Lincoln ;  "  it  was  the  time  when  religion  ceased 
to  be  a  duty  and  became  a  pleasure."  Tholuck,  the 
renowned  theologian,  who  stood  by,  remarked  after- 
wards :  "  That  was  a  magnificent  answer." 

7.  In  the  old  French  romance  it  is  the  girl  who  is 
modest,  while  Perceval  is  an  ignorant  young  ruffian, 
intent  merely  on  having  his  own  way:  Quant  pres  du 
pavilion  fut  arrive,  ouvert  le  trouva,  dedans  lequel  vit 
un  lict  noblement  accoutre,  sur  lequel  etoit  une  pucelle 
seule  endormie,  laquelle  avoient  laissee  ses  demoyselles 
qui  etoient  alle  cueiller  des  fleurs  pour  le  pavilion  jolier 
et  parier,  comme  de  ce  faire  etoient  accoutumees.  Lors 
est  Perceval  du  lict  de  la  pucelle  approche,  courrant  assez 
lourdement  dessus  son  cheval :  adonc  s'est  la  pucelle 
assez  effrayement  eveillee.  A  laquelle  dit  Perceval, 
"  Pucelle,  Je  vous  salue,  comme  ma  mere  m'a  apprins, 
laquelle  m'a  commande  que  jamais  pucelle  ne  trouvasse, 
que  humblement  ne  la  saluasse."  Aux  paroles  du  jeune 
Perceval,  se  print  la  pucelle  a  trembler,  car  bien  luy 
sembloit  qu'il  n'etoit  gueres  sage,  comme  le  montroit 
assez  son  parier ;  et  bien  se  reputoit  folle,  que  ainsi  seule 
1*  avoit  trouvee  endormie.  Puis  elle  lui  dit :  "Amy  pense 
bien-tot  d'icy  te  departir,  de  peur  que  mes  amis  ne  t'y 
trouvent,  car  si  icy  te  rencontroient,  il  t'en  pourroit  mal 
advenir."  "Par  ma  foi,"  dit  Perceval,  "jamais  d'icy 
ne  partirai  que,  premier  baisee  ne  vous  aye."  A  quoy 
repond  la  pucelle  que  non  fasse,  mais  que  bientot  pense 

(83) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM: 

device  is  almost  ludicrously  inadequate;  8  dra- 
matically it  is,  of  course,  very  effective.  In 
Wolfram  the  man  who  has  in  him  a  potential 
spirituality,  in  the  person  of  Parzival,  is  con- 
trasted to  sharp  advantage  with  the  thorough 
worldliness  of  Gawain.  Naturally,  and  with 
the  deepest  insight,  the  poet  assigns  the 
victory  over  the  magician  Klingsor  to  this 
worldly  character  as  the  highest  achievement 
of  which  he  is  capable.  But  when  Gawain 
enters  on  a  conflict  with  Parzival,  he  suffers 
a  grievous  defeat;  and  this  defeat  means  much 


de  departir,  que  ses  amis  la  ne  le  trouvent.  "  Pucelle," 
fait  Perceval,  "pour  votre  parler,  d'icy  ne  partirai  tant 
que  de  vous  aye  eu  ung  baiser;  car  ma  mere  m'a  a  ce 
faire  ainsi  enseigne."  Tant  s'est  Perceval  de  la  pucelle 
approche,  qu'il  1'a  par  force  baisee;  car  pouvoir  n'eut 
elle  d'y  resister,  combien  qu'elle  se  deffendit  bien.  Mais 
tant  etoit  lors  Perceval  lafre  et  lourd,  que  la  defense 
d'icelle  ne  luy  put  profiter,  qu'il  ne  luy  prit  baiser,  voulsit 
elle  ou  non,  voire,  comme  dit  le  conte,  plus  de  vingt  fois. 
8.  The  incident  illustrates  the  fact  that  there  are 
certain  conventions  of  the  stage,  as  in  every  art,  which 
seem  rational  in  their  place,  but  would  only  provoke 
sarcastic  reflections  if  adopted  in  real  life. 

(84) 


WOLFRAM  AND  WAGNER 

more  to  Wolfram  than  the  same  incident  in 
the  ordinary  Arthurian  romances,  since  it 
symbolizes  for  him  the  victory  of  the  spirit 
over  the  flesh,9  and  is  the  last  proof  needed 
of  Parzival's  fitness  for  the  Graal  Kingship. 
In  Wagner,  evidently  for  dramatic  reasons, 
Gawain  is  ignored  altogether  and  Parsifal  is 
made  the  victor  over  Klingsor.  Thus  the 
Christian  symbolism  in  this  part  of  Wagner's 
work  becomes  perforce  a  kind  of  magic, 


g.  In  fact,  the  allegory  at  this  point  comes  very 
close  in  its  most  intimate  meaning  to  that  of  Bunyan  in 
his  Holy  War,  where  King  Immanuel,  in  reference  to 
death  and  resurrection,  is  made  to  say :  "  I  will  take 
down  this  famous  town  of  Mansoul,  stick  and  stone,  to 
the  ground.  And  I  will  carry  the  stones  thereof,  and 
the  timber  thereof,  and  the  walls  thereof,  and  the  dust 
thereof,  and  the  inhabitants  thereof,  into  mine  own  coun- 
try, even  into  the  kingdom  of  my  father:  and  will  there 
set  it  up  in  such  strength  and  glory  as  it  never  did  see 
in  this  kingdom  where  now  it  is  placed."  BUNYAN, 
Holy  War,  Ed.  Burder,  reprinted  at  Pittsburg,  1830. 
For  the  apostolic  legends,  some  of  which  cast  light  on 
the  superstitions  embodied  in  the  graal  romances,  see 
R.  A.  LIPSIUS,  Die  Apokryphen  Apostelgeschichtcn  und 
Apostellegenden. 

(85) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

better  than  Klingsor's  merely  because  it  is 
more    efficacious.10      The    difference    is    the 


lo.  The  sign  of  the  cross  was  no  doubt  from  early 
times  considered  infallible  against  demons,  but  the  spec- 
tacular thaumaturgy  adopted  by  Wagner  is  not  that  of 
the  church  except  in  legend:  Kat  6f  ev&vf  diravrg  ry  rov 
cravpov  dwdpet  rrjv  xe*Pa  Ka&oirMpac,  rvirovaav  avrbv  Kol 
KOTO  rov  fiai/j.ovof  /Jd/lAovtrav.  NlCEPHORUS  CHUMNUS  on 
Bishop  Theoleptus.  BOISSONADE,  Anecdota  Graeca,  V. 
p.  208. 

f6re  ra  novrjpa  7rve{y/ara,  -&eig  dwdfiei  npupovfieva,  elf  0«f 
,  "Ov%  viro/uevo/jiev"  teyavTa,  "ov6c  avro- 
rov  Sw&p.ei  not  rfi  ovfi/36%.<f)  TOV  irdi?ovc 
a'vrov,  bv  aravpbv  Katovoiv.  Barlaant  and  Josaphat, 
BOISSONADE,  op.  cit.,  IV.  p.  283.  Compare  ATHANASIUS, 
Life  of  St.  Anthony,  sections  23  and  35. 

Quanto  terrori  sit  daemonibus  hoc  signum,  &c.  I^AC- 
TANTiUS,  IV.  27. 

Simply  to  name  Christ  served  the  same  purpose.  Thus 
in  Barlaam  and  Josaphat,  the  demons  say:  'AAA'  km- 
K^Tj&elf  av&ie  b  X/cuordf  elf  avftfia^tavf  Trvpl  rtff  gvudev  bpytff 
fyuaf  Kara0/l^fac,  <j>vyd6ag  elp-ydaaro.  BOISSONADE,  IV.  284. 

The  formula  in  the  mouth  of  Saint  Aberce,  a  famous 
exorcist,  was :      'A/cdi^apra  irvevfiara,  tv   ru   ovd/ian  ' 
Xpiffrow  efeAtfdvra,  elf  dpof  avdptiTroif   cnr&'&eTe  avei 

BOISSONADE,  V.  467. 

It  is  singular  that  Wagner,  a  rationalist  with  Prot- 
estant antecedents,  did  not  adopt  this  verbal  exorcism 
rather  than  the  sign  of  the  cross,  which  has  been  so 
severely  condemned  by  all  the  reformed  churches. 
(86) 


WOLFRAM  AND  WAGNER 

same  as  that  between  the  simple  rejection 
of  Simon  Magus  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
and  the  elaborate  thaumaturgy  attributed  to 
the  apostles  in  the  later  legends.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  here  Wolfram  shows  a  much 
more  thorough  practical  knowledge  of  Chris- 
tian psychology  than  his  modern  rival. 

In  another  case  dramatic  convenience  and 
truth  to  human  nature  both  dictated  the 
merging  of  one  character  in  another.  Gurne- 
manz,  the  old  knightly  tutor  of  Parzival,  and 
Trevirenz,  his  hermit  confessor,  both  teach 
him  the  same  lesson.  In  ignoring  Trevirenz 
and  emphasizing  the  excellent  old  knight, 
who  is  not  only  devout  but  experienced, 
whose  piety  has  been  tried  in  the  world  of 
action,  Wagner  has  made  a  change  which  can 
never  be  improved  upon.  In  enlarging  the 
character  of  Kundry  to  that  of  the  Herodias 
of  popular  legend  and  bringing  her  to  rest 
and  peace  at  last,  Wagner  has  illustrated  his 

(87) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

principle  of  compassion  to  a  degree  that 
would  have  been  impossible  to  mediaeval 
minds.11  But  in  general  it  may  be  said  that 
Wagner  has  read  out  more  profound  thought 
than  he  has  put  into  the  story  of  Parzival  as 
it  left  Wolfram's  hands.  He  has  reverted  to 
the  brilliant  externals  of  the  earliest  romancers 
in  place  of  the  inner  meanings.  If  the  music 
restores  these  inner  meanings,  which  Wag- 
ner's poem  itself  falls  short  of,  that  is  another 
thing. 


ii.  The  law,  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to 
live,"  was  ingrained  in  the  middle  ages,  and  even  in 
much  later  times. 


(88) 


X 

THE  GRAAL 

It  was  possible  for  Wagner  to  realize 
scenically  what  his  mediaeval  predecessors 
could  only  imagine.  They  succeeded  in  de- 
scribing, with  the  utmost  vividness  of  which 
words  are  capable,  the  graal  as  glowing  by 
a  light  from  within  itself.  The  electric  light 
enabled  Wagner  to  perform  this  miracle.  It 
will  doubtless  be  achieved  in  time  without  the 
aid  of  an  electric  apparatus.  But  to  Wolf- 
ram, who  was  evidently  reluctant  to  follow 
his  models  in  the  too  close  identification  of 
the  graal,  with  the  deepest  of  Christian  mys- 
teries, the  form  of  this  object  and  its  virtues 
are  rather  vague.  There  is  no  doubt,  from 
the  very  first  attempt  to  use  the  history  and 
fables  about  Arthur  as  a  background  for 
(89) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

romanticizing  the  political  and  ecclesiastical 
theories  and  opinions  of  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries,  that  the  graal  was  under- 
stood to  be  the  dish  out  of  which  Jesus  and 
his  disciples  had  eaten  the  last  Supper.1  The 


i.  The  fact  that  it  is  usually  a  cup,  not  a  dish,  that 
is  spoken  of  in  the  legends,  points  back  to  the  quarrel 
between  the  laity  and  the  clergy  over  the  limitation  of 
the  former  to  communion  in  one  kind.  This  was  re- 
sented at  the  point  of  the  sword  in  Bohemia,  and  the 
deprivation  was  felt  bitterly  elsewhere,  particularly  by 
the  aristocratic  and  military  classes.  The  existence  of 
such  vessels  as  the  Genoese  catino  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  graal  romances,  all  of  which  invariably  repre- 
sent the  miraculous  dish  as  having  been  taken  to  heaven 
or  to  some  inaccessible  region  of  Asia.  In  fact,  it  would 
have  annoyed  kings,  nobles  and  romancers  in  Northern 
Europe  greatly  to  have  been  obliged  to  confess  that  an 
Italian  commune  possessed  the  most  wonderful  relic  in 
Christendom. 

International  jealousy  on  points  of  this  sort  in  the 
middle  age  is  exemplified  by  the  conflict  of  opinion  over 
the  identity  of  the  spear  supposed  to  have  pierced  the 
side  of  Christ  as  he  hung  on  the  cross.  Germany  had 
rested  since  the  time  of  Henry  the  Fowler  in  the  belief 
that  when  that  monarch  gave  Swabia  as  well  as  a  great 
deal  else  for  a  lance  head  and  two  nails  said  to  have 
once  belonged  to  Constantine  the  Great,  he  secured  the 
(90) 


THE  GRAAL 

best  proof  that  could  be  desired  of  the  nov- 
elty of  this  idea  and  its  lack  of  any  tradi- 
tional perspective  is  that  nobody  knew  what 


weapon  with  which  the  side  of  Christ  was  pierced. 
[Compilatio  Chronologica,  ad  annum  920;  Bono,  Syn- 
tapma  de  Ecclesia  Gander sheim.;  SiGEBERT  of  Gem- 
blours.]  They  carried  it  to  battle  and  fancied  that  it 
won  them  victories  [DiTMAuus,  lib.  I.].  They  insisted 
on  seeing  it  at  the  coronation  of  their  king-emperor 
[DITMARUS,  lib.  V.].  It  was  stolen  and  secreted  in  the 
interest  of  one  aspirant  or  another  to  the  throne  [HER- 
MANNUS  CONTRACTUS,  ad  annum  1062].  In  the  popular 
mind  it  was  associated  with  the  great  sword  which, 
according  to  legend,  had  been  given  to  Charlemagne  by 
an  angel  [Jon ANN  STATWERCH,  ad  annum  1380].  But 
when  a  rival  spear  point  was  dug  up  at  Antioch  about 
the  close  of  the  eleventh  century,  the  Germans  were 
taken  aback.  While  many  stoutly  maintained  the  gen- 
uineness of  Constantine's  lance,  others  accepted  the  dis- 
covery at  Antioch  as  true,  and  with  Godfrey  of  Viterbo, 
dismissed  its  competitor  as  only  the  lance  of  St.  Maurice. 
The  dispute  affected  the  fortunes  of  the  empire  as  well 
as  those  of  the  Christian  armies  in  Syria.  Henry  the 
Second,  the  son  of  a  German  empress,  and  very  strict  in 
his  theories  of  vassalage  and  hereditary  rights,  could 
hardly  fail  to  be  on  the  imperial  side  in  the  controversy. 
Besides,  Constantine  was  born  in  Great  Britain,  and 
legend  had  it  that  his  mother  was  a  British  princess. 
Obviously  there  is  good  reason  for  the  conduct  of  the 

(91) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

the  tryblion2  mentioned  by  the  evangelists 
Matthew  and  Mark  was  like.  It  is  not  easy 
to  discern  why  the  Latin  Vulgate  translated 
the  same  word  in  Matthew  by  paropsis  and 
in  Mark  by  catinus?  But  between  the  infor- 
mation which  Isidore 4  has  given,  that  the 
paropsis  was  a  rectangular,  equilateral  dish, 
and  the  reasonable  belief  that  the  Latin 
catinus  did  not  greatly  differ  from  its  modern 
namesake,  the  Italian  catino,  it  can  at  least  be 
inferred  that  neither  our  Lord  nor  his  apos- 
tles, in  the  midst  of  graver  matters,  troubled 


graal  romancers  in  completely  ignoring  the  lance  of 
Antioch,  and  in  associating  the  sacred  weapon  of  their 
fiction  with  the  story  of  ancient  Britain. 

2.  MATTHEW,  xxvi.  23:    '0  6i  AiroKpf&elf  ciTrev'O  ip.- 
/3di[>af  fier'  ijiov  iv  TGJ  TpvfiMtJ  rfjv  x£^Pai  ovr6^  fie  irapaS&oti. 

MARK,  xiv.  20:  '0  6e  aTronpidels,  elirev  avrolf  '  Elf  c/c  ruv 
(Wjfitna  6  e/j./3airT6ficvof  /uer*  tfwv  c/f  TO  Tpvjttdov. 

3.  MATTHEW  :  At  ipse  respondens,  ait :   Qui  intingit 
mecum  manum  in  paropside,  hie  me  tradet. 

MARK  :    Qui  ait  illis :    Unus  ex  duodecim,  qui  in- 
tingit mecum  manum  in  catino. 

4.  ISIDORE  20,  Orig.  4,  10,  cited  by  Forcellini,  sub 
voce. 

(02) 


THE  GRAAL 

themselves  overmuch  about  their  table  furni- 
ture. Nor  did  the  fancy  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury give  itself  any  trouble  to  remember  the 
words  of  Scripture.  It  simply  substituted  for 
them  the  old  French  word  graal,  greal,  grail, 
combined  this  with  san,  holy,  and  in  a  few 
mispronunciations  had  the  substance  of  a 
legend.5  The  relation  of  the  word  graal  to 
the  Latin  gradate  is  now  a  matter  of  com- 
mon knowledge.  No  doubt,  in  the  fervent 
disputes  of  the  Sacramentarians  and  the  Or- 
thodox, when  Berengar  was  traversing  Anjou 
and  Normandy  and  keeping  everybody  in  a 
fever,  the  French  word  got  an  importance  it 
would  otherwise  never  have  had.  It  was 
always  San  Graal,  San  Greal,  in  these  dis- 


5.  It  is  probable  that  graal  was  the  original  form  of 
the  word ;  greal  followed  as  an  attempt  to  spell  accord- 
ing to  sound,  while  grail  was  a  more  learned  effort  at 
accuracy.  Gradale  is  not  the  neuter  of  the  Latin  adjec- 
tive gradalis,  but  a  corrupt  pronunciation  of  crate! la.  Of 
course  sancg  real,  real  blood,  followed  the  phrase  San 
Greal,  as  the  night  the  day. 

(93) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

putes,  to  distinguish  it  from  ordinary  dishes. 
When  that  sort  of  thing  goes  on  for  half  a 
century  or  more,  there  is  bound  to  be  mysti- 
fication in  the  best  educated  community,  and 
most  people  were  not  educated  at  all,  in  the 
way  of  book  learning,  in  the  twelfth  century. 
Only  one  man,  the  Flemish  chronicler 
Helinandus,  paid  any  attention  to  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  common,  every-day  graal  as 
well  as  a  holy  graal.6  This  ordinary  graal, 
which  people  saw  at  meal  time,  was  a  wide, 
rather  deep  dish,  such  as  Helinandus  sup- 
posed would  be  called  scutella  in  Latin.  This 
Latin  word  has  survived  in  the  Italian  sco- 
della,  equivalent  to  the  English  porringer. 


6.  "  Gradalis  vel  gradale  dicitur  gallice  scutella  lata 
et  aliquantulum  profunda;  dicitur  et  vulgari  nomine 
graal,  quia  grata  est."  Paulin  Paris  was  the  first  to 
mention  this  passage  as  bearing  on  the  graal  romances. 
Helinandus,  being  a  Fleming,  was  just  far  enough  re- 
moved from  the  regions  where  the  graal  flourished  to 
feel  a  curiosity  about  it  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  able 
to  satisfy  himself. 

(94) 


THE  GRAAL 

The  additional  information  which  Helinan- 
dus  gave  as  to  the  food-providing  powers  of 
the  holy  graal,  he  probably  found  in  the  graal 
romances,  which  in  his  time  were  already 
widely  popular.  The  legend  of  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  holy  graal  and  its  transfer  from 
Palestine  to  England  by  Joseph  of  Arimathea 
is  to  all  appearances  another  of  the  pure 
fictions  of  the  twelfth  century,  with  abso- 
lutely no  perspective  7  in  the  way  of  popular 

7.  The  author  of  this  fiction  showed  his  familiarity 
with  the  earlier  apocrypha  and  legends.  In  fact  he  had 
the  substance  of  the  Veronica  legend  in  his  prayer-book, 
and  the  rest  were  not  remote.  The  Gospel  of  Nicodemus 
was  a  favorite  with  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  with  the 
early  Provencal  troubadours.  The  apocalypse  of  Paul 
was  newly  translated  in  Western  Europe  about  his  time, 
and  doubtless  other  tales  concerning  primitive  Christians 
accompanied  it.  He  would  ask  himself  who  had  been 
neglected  in  these  tales,  and  would  thus  hit  upon  a  name 
without  a  fixed  and  known  tradition.  With  that  name 
he  would  begin,  and  would  need  for  guidance  in  his 
invention  merely  the  example  of  numerous  lives  of  the 
saints  and  other  fictitious  narratives  familiar  to  him. 
No  doubt  the  popular  discourses  of  the  preachers  inter- 
ested in  the  controversy  raised  by  Berengar  would  be  of 

assistance  to  him. 

(95) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

tradition.  Wolfram  cared  nothing  for  it.  The 
graal  for  him  was  simply  an  object  which  pro- 
vided food  for  the  knights  who  guarded  it,  by 
virtue  of  the  fact  that  every  Good  Friday  a 
dove  descended  from  heaven  and  laid  upon  it 
an  oblate.8  Even  here  the  direct  reference  of 
the  older  tales  to  the  bread  or  wafer  of  the 
Eucharist  was  avoided  by  the  German  poet. 
This  precious  object,  he  added,  was  originally 
guarded  by  those  angels  who  were  neutral  at 
the  time  of  the  war  in  heaven,  but  was  now  in 
the  care  of  an  order  of  Knights  called  Tem- 
pleis.  The  name  which  was  given  to  this 
object  in  the  manuscript  of  Wolfram's  poem 
has  long  been  a  puzzle.  Besides  calling  it  the 
graal,  he  also  described  it  as  Lapsit  exillis* 
As  x  and  r  are  exactly  alike  in  mediaeval 


Ein  tub'  von  himel  swinget, 
Uf  den  stein  diu  bringet 
Ein  kleine  wiz  ablat. 
Uf  dem  steine  sie  die  lat 
Er  heizet  lapsit  exillis. 
(96) 


THE  GRAAL 

writing,  these  expressions  have  been  read 
lapis  herilis,10 — stone  of  the  Lord.  Another 
interpretation  is  Lapis  ex  cells,11  —  stone  from 
heaven, —  referring,  it  is  supposed,  to  the 
legend  of  a  jewel  lost  by  Lucifer  when  he 
was  cast  out  of  heaven.  Neither  of  these 
explanations  is  considered  satisfactory. 

While  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  good 
Arabic  scholar  will  take  the  trouble  to  look 
for  a  possible  key  to  Wolfram's  enigma  in  a 
phrase  of  the  Koran  or  the  Mohammedan  tra- 
ditions,12 yet  a  conjecture  may  be  hazarded 
that  Wolfram  tried  to  reproduce  a  Greek 
word  or  phrase  which  he  had  heard  associ- 
ated with  the  narrative  that  was  in  his  mind; 
for  example,  hapi?,  the  name  of  a  utensil  used 


10.  HAZLITT'S  WARTON,  I.,  p.  49,  note  2. 

11.  Lapsi  de  cells  has  also  been  suggested. 

12.  The  variation  in  the  vowels  of  the  name  Allah 
in  such  phrases  as  Bismillah  and  Allhamdolillah  sug- 
gest the  possibility  of  an  Arabic  explanation.    But  the 
phrase  to  be  satisfactory  would  have  to  be  one  that  is 
or  was  in  actual  use. 

(97) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

in  handling  the  bread  broken  at  the  com- 
munion, or  Mftrjg-,  a  kind  of  basin.  These 
words  sound  nearly  alike  in  Greek,  so  that  a 
fair  representation  of  the  sounds  in  the  mys- 
terious phrase  of  the  Parzival  is  given  by 
either  AojStc  tfea/eeAof,  or  Xefiris  $£aKeXo$  — 
miraculous  or  wonderful  holder,  or  miracu- 
lous basin.  One  may  smile  at  these  phrases, 
but  how  about  ayta  Aa/3t$-  —  holy  holder,13 


13.  Ore  ds  fiehfai  otppayioai  Toi>f  apTovf}7\.eyei'  Hoirjaov  TOV 
aprov  TOVTOV,  eviKUf,  wf  elf  eanv  6  Xpiarof  ovtf  uf  rivef  a/ 
Acyowrt,  roif  aprovf  rovrovg '  nal  Sre  fie^et  vipuaai,  vijioi 
<5/io£p,  /cat  fj.tki^f.1  TOV  irpoaKO[u£6/j.evov  irpuTov  aprov,  /cat  r 
rrjv  /ucpida,  ev  T(J  dy'ip  TroD/ptu,  Kal  iyxt£l  Ka*  T°  &o 
EZra,  Xaftuv  TIJV  dyiav  Aa/3tda  fi(.ra  TTJ<;  de^iaf  ^etpoc,  pdipei  avrfjv 
iv  TCJ  dyiu  alpari'  TTJ  6£  dpiarepa  %eipi  ^-o.^d.vei  EKCIOTOV  aprov, 
/cat  eio<t>fpei  rtjv  dyiav  Aa/?trfa,  //era  rod  ayiov  at/zarof  /Je/3a///uev)7V, 
/cat  eyyifct  avrrjv  kv  TU  &yi<p  opro  aravpoeidw;  ev  ru  [tepei,  EV  u 
i%apdx'&ii  6  OTavpbg  inrb  TTJV  i/'f^a,  /cat  cnroTi'&Tiai  TOVTOV  ev  rtJ 
apToQopiu.  K.  T.  ?..  Euchologion  Mega.  Phoenix  Printing- 
house,  Venice,  pp.  105-6. 

Greek  preachers  did  not  hesitate  to  describe  the  Vir- 
gin Mary  under  the  figure  of  the  Aa/J/f  with  which  the 
seraph  in  Isaiah  (vi,  6)  took  a  live  coal  from  the  altar. 
BOISSONADE,  Anecdota  Graeca,  III.  pp.  24,  26. 

Extracts  from  NEALE'S  Liturgies,  a  translation  of 
Greek  service  books,  which  is  not  accessible  to  me,  will 
(98) 


THE  GRAAL 

which  is  used  outright  in  the  ritual  explana- 
tions of  the  Greek  Church?  Attributing  to 
the  first  of  these  the  changes  which  Wolfram 
is  supposed  to  have  made  in  the  Latin  phrases 
already  cited  and  the  result  is  A<n/u#  £o«eAof. 
The  form  of  the  object  is  evidently  ignored  by 
Wolfram,  and  his  German  ear  would  not  dis- 
tinguish Greek  /J  from  f  or  p,  nor  •&  from  t, 
while  x  for  sk  is  an  almost  universal  corrup- 
tion. Phrases  of  this  sort  may  easily  have 
been  imported  into  Western  Europe  by  re- 
turning crusaders,  especially  Templars.  That 
Wolfram  had  a  Latin  expression  in  mind  is 
most  unlikely.  He  would  have  known  what 

be  found  in  the  supplementary  note  on  the  graal  in 
WILSON'S  DUNLOP.  The  way  the  name  of  Joseph  of 
Arimathea  figures  in  some  of  the  Eastern  liturgies  is 
suggestive.  Moreover,  the  thought  of  a  Greek  original 
for  Wolfram's  phrase  fits  very  well  with  the  opinion  of 
Gorres  that  the  poet  had  a  Greek  model  for  some  parts 
of  his  poem.  HAZLITT'S  WARTON,  I.,  p.  50,  note.  Mr. 
Price,  in  discussing  the  subject,  points  out  that  the  cup 
of  the  patriarch  Joseph  might  help  to  suggest  the  legend 
attached  to  his  namesake  of  Arimathea. 

(99) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

it  meant  and  how  the  words  were  divided, 
even  though  he  could  not  write  them.  Greek 
words  orally  transmitted  and  curiously  dis- 
torted in  the  process  occur  in  the  philo- 
sophical and  theological  discussions  of  the 
eleventh,  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries. 
The  classical  instance  is  scinderesis,  a  com- 
mon word  with  the  scholastic  philosophers, 
supposed  to  be  intended  for  a  rare  and  late 
Greek 


(too) 


XI 
FLEGETANIS 

Wolfram  was  twitted  even  in  his  own  day 
with  his  tricks  of  mystification,  as  those  point 
out  who  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  read 
Gottlieb  of  Strasburg's  Tristan.1  Perhaps  an- 
other well-known  puzzle  in  the  Parzival  is 
also  to  be  explained  by  Wolfram's  desire  to 
bewilder  his  readers  with  a  pretense  of  remote 
or  occult  learning.  In  the  ninth  book  it  is 
said  that  "  Master  Kyot  "  obtained  his  infor- 
mation about  the  graal  at  Toledo,  Spain,  from 
the  writings  of  an  Arabian,  or  rather  Jewish 


i.  KARL  PANNIER,  Parzival  (translated  into  modern 
German),  introduction,  says  that  Gottlieb  described 
Wolfram  as  — 

Vindaere  wilder  maere 

Der  maere  wildermaere. 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

philosopher  named  Flegetanis.2  The  volume 
was  dusty  from  long  neglect.  It  was  in 
crooked  heathen  script.  Kyot  studied  the 

•2.  Price,  in  his  famous  preface  to  Warton,  gives  a 
paraphrase  of  this  passage  somewhat  different  from  that 
which  follows  in  the  text  herewith.  HAZLITT'S  WARTON, 
I.,  pp.  50  f.  The  original  is  as  follows : 

Ein  heiden  Flegetanis, 
bejagete  an  kiinste  hohen  pris 
der  selbe  fision 
was  geborn  von  salmon, 
us  israhelscher  sippe  erzilt 
von  alter  her,  uuz  unser  schilt 
der  touf  wart  fiir'z  hellefiur. 
der  schreip  von's  grales  aventiur. 
er  was  ein  heiden  vaterhalp, 
Flegetanis,  der  an  ein  kalp 
bette  als  ob  ez  waer'sin  got. 
wie  mac  der  tievel  selhen  spot 
gefiiegen  an  so  wiser  diet, 
daz  sie  niht  scheidet  ode  schiet 
da  von  der  treit  die  hoehsten  hant 
tint  dem  elliu  wunder  sint  bekant  ? 
Flegetanis  der  heiden 
kunde  uns  wol  bescheiden 
iesliches  sternen  hinganc 
unt  siner  kiinfte  widerwanc ; 
wie  lange  ieslicher  umbe  get, 
e  er  wider  an  sin  zil  gestet. 
(  102  ) 


FLEGETANIS 

strange  letters  with  diligence,  but  had  to 
learn  necromancy  besides  in  order  to  under- 
stand what  he  read.  Even  then,  if  he  had 
not  been  baptized,3  he  would  have  failed,  and 

mit  der  sternen  umbereise  vart 

ist  gepruevet  aller  menschlich  art. 

Flegetanis  der  heiden  sach, 

da  von  .er  bluwecliche  sprach, 

im  gestirn'  nur  sinen  ougen 

verholenbaeriu  tougen. 

er  jach,  ez  hiez  ein  dine  der  gral 

des  namen  las  er  sunder  twal 

imme  gestirne,  wie  der  hiez. 

ein  schar  in  uf  der  erden  liez : 

diu  fuor  uf  iiber  die  sternen  hoch. 

op  die  ir  unschult  wider  zoch 

sit  muoz  sin  pflegen  getouftin  fruht 

mit  also  kiuschlicher  zuht : 

diu  mennischeit  ist  iemer  wert 

der  zuo  dem  grale  wirt  gegert. 

sus  schreip  dervon  Flegetanis,  etc. 

—  BARTSCH,  Parsival  text,  IX.,  623  ff. 
3.  It  has  been  remarked  that  Wolfram  seems  to 
have  considered  himself  an  advocate  of  the  rite  of  bap- 
tism. That  would  be  quite  natural,  if  Karl  Pearson  is 
right  in  his  estimate  of  it  as  a  ceremony  of  old  Teutonic 
heathenism  as  well  as  of  Christianity.  "  If  the  father 
accepted  the  child,  he  was  asked  how  it  should  be  named  ; 
he  then  poured  water  over  it  and  gave  it  a  name.  Occa- 

(103  ) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

the  secret  of  the  wonderful  manuscript  would 
still  be  unknown.  For  never  can  the  heathen 
understanding  penetrate  the  mystery  of  the 
graal.  The  book  showed  that  Flegetanis  be- 
longed to  the  race  of  Solomon,  and  that  he 
was  renowned  for  wisdom  in  days  before  the 
beginning  of  Christianity.  He  discovered  the 
courses  of  the  stars,  where  and  when  each 
rises  and  sets  and  completes  its  periodical 
movement.  He  calculated  the  orbits  of  the 
stars,  to  which  bends  the  life  of  mankind. 
Fearfully  he  hinted  at  a  great  mystery  which 
the  stars  revealed  to  him;  it  was  a  thing  called 
the  graal.  In  the  stars  he  found  it  written 
that  the  graal  was  left  on  earth  by  its  first 
guardians,  whose  purity  drew  them  back 
again  to  the  stars.  Christendom  [Flegetanis 
knew  all  about  Christianity,  though  he  lived 


sionally  he  left  this  ceremony  to  one  of  his  near  kin, 
who  then  named  and  baptized  the  child.     This   same 
heathen  baptism  existed  also  in  Germany."     PEARSON, 
Chances  of  Death  and  Other  Essays,  II.,  p.  212  f. 
(104) 


FLEGETANIS 

before  the  time  of  Christ!]  must  now  cherish 
the  stone  with  the  purest  virtue. 

Kyot,  having  mastered  the  book,  sought 
a  record  of  the  later  vicissitudes  of  the  graal 
in  Latin,  and  in  the  chronicles  of  Ireland, 
England,  and  all  other  countries,  till  he  found 
it  in  the  history  of  Anjou.  But  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  follow  Wolfram  in  his  allusions  to 
Angevin  affairs.  The  question  is,  who  was 
Flegetanis?  Observe,  in  the  first  place,  that 
the  word  is  accented  on  the  second  syllable. 
This  fact  alone  suffices  to  dispose  of  the  wild 
conjecture  which  makes  the  name  a  tran- 
scription of  the  hypothetical  Persian  Felekhe- 
Daneh,4  said  to  mean  astronomer  or  astrolo- 


4.  This  was  the  supposition  of  Gorres.  The  main 
objection  to  it  is  that  no  Persian  ever  used  such  a  phrase 
to  describe  an  astronomer.  To  look  for  an  Arabic  orig- 
inal of  the  name  was  natural,  as  the  names  of  the  stars 
adopted  by  Wolfram,  and  much  of  the  material  of  the 
poem  were  plainly  Oriental.  If  Flegetanis  was  a  de- 
scendant of  Solomon,  his  name  ought  to  be  Hebrew. 
But  all  these  inferences  proved  defective. 

(105) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

ger.  It  has  been  shown  repeatedly  by  various 
critics  that  an  Arabic  derivation  is  out  of  the 
question.  The  name  should  be  Hebrew,  and 
it  is  not;  but  it  may  be  plain  English,  of  a 
kind,  somewhat  damaged  by  a  long  conti- 
nental career.  Allusion  was  made  some  pages 
back  to  a  translation  of  the  Koran  in  1143  by 
two  monkish  scholars,  one  of  whom  was  an 
Englishman.  This  Englishman  was  Robert 
de  Retines,  the  Retines  being  perhaps  a  cor- 
ruption of  Reading.5  After  he  finished  his 
work  on  the  Koran  for  Peter  the  Venerable, 
Abbot  of  Cluny,  he  decided  to  remain  in 
Spain,  and  eventually  became  Archdeacon  of 
Pampeluna.  In  addition  to  the  Koran  he 
translated  one  or  more  of  the  writings  of 
Alkendi,  a  Jewish-Arabian  philosopher  of  the 
ninth  century.6  If  he  had  turned  the  philo- 


5.  Radinges   is   a    form    for   Reading   used   in   the 
Chronicon  de  Bella. 

6.  Alkendi  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  Arabian 
scholastic  philosophers. 

(106) 


FLEGETANIS 

sophical  works  of  Alkendi  into  Latin,  he 
might  have  done  a  real  service  to  the  world, 
as  these  have  since  nearly  all  disappeared. 
But  he  preferred  astrology,  and  so  the  pieces 
which  he  translated,  according  to  the  reports 
of  those  who  have  glanced  at  them,7  must 
correspond  very  closely  to  the  supposititious 
book  described  by  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach. 
Retines  appears  to  have  been  called  Ketines  8 


7.  "  Tanner  attributes  to  Robert  de  Retines  a  tract 
contained    in    several    manuscripts    at    Oxford,    entitled 
Judicia  Jacobi  Alkindi  Astrologi  ex  translatione  Roberti 
Anglici,   .   .    .    which  appears  not  improbable  from  the 
circumstance  that  the  same  tract  occurs  in  a  manuscript 
...   in  the  British  Museum  [MS.  COTTON,  Appendix, 
VI.,  fol.  109,  r°]  with  the  title,  Incipiunt  Judicia  Alkindi 
Astrologi,  Rodberti  de  Ketene  translatio.     Its  subject  is 
purely  astrological,  the  object  being  to  reduce  to  a  sys- 
tem which  admits  of  calculation  the  supposed  influence 
of  the  planets  on  the  elements,  on  mankind,  and  on  pri- 
vate actions  and  political  events."    WRIGHT,  Biographia 
Britannica  Literaria,  II.,  p.  119. 

8.  This  error  lasted  until  the  eighteenth  century. 
Fabricius  corrected  it,  though  he  may  not  have  been  the 
first  to  do  so.     Huet,  a  French  bishop  and  a  renowned 
Latinist,  accepted  the  error  in  his  treatise  on  translators. 

(107) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

in  Spain,  and  his  name  in  that  form  is  fre- 
quent in  manuscripts.  As  a  monk,  or  even 
secular  priest,  he  would  be  known  as  Frey 
Ketines,  and  here  is  at  least  a  rational,  if 
not  historical  explanation  of  the  origin  of 
Fle-getanis.  An  /  for  an  r  9  is  not  infrequent 


Huet's  remarks  are  of  interest  aside  from  his  blunder: 
"  Petri  Cluniacensis  impensis  et  hortatu  Alcorani  con- 
versionem  molitus  est  Robertus  Ketenensis  Anglus, 
Ecclesiae  olim  Pompelonensis  Archidiaconus,  Hermanni 
Dalmatae  opera  adjustus,  qui  alia  quoque  ipse  ad 
Muhammedi  doctrinam  et  res  gestae  spectantia  opuscula 
ex  Arabico  Latine  rependit.  HUETIUS,  De  Interpreta- 
tione,  pp.  185  f. 

9.  This  is  illustrated  by  a  curious  blunder  in  the 
printed  editions  of  Gower's  Confessio  Amantis.  In  the 
fourth  book,  according  tp  Pauli's  edition,  occur  these 
lines : 

Claudius,  Esdras  and  Sulpices, 
Termegis,  Pandulf  and  Frigidilles, 
Menander  Ephiloquorus, 
Solins,  Pandas  and  Josephus 
The  first  were  of  enditours 
Of  old  croniques  and  eke  auctours. 

Among  other  problems  offered  by  these  verses  was 
that  of  the  identity  of  Frigidilles.     Warton  thought  Fre- 
degaire,  a  Burgundian  chronicler  of  the  seventh  century, 
(108) 


FLEGETANIS 

mispronunciation,  and  g  hard  for  k  an  error  of 
hearing  familiar  enough.  Putting  the  name 
of  a  translator  for  that  of  the  author  is  some- 
thing that  happens  even  in  modern  times, 
with  all  the  improvements  that  have  been 
made  in  means  and  methods  for  identifying 
books  and  writers. 


was  intended,  or  Frigeridus,  a  writer  mentioned  by  Greg- 
ory of  Tours,  but  whose  works  are  all  lost.  Finally 
Morley,  in  his  reprint  of  the  poem,  changed  the  word  to 
"  Frige  Dares,"  which  may  not  be  what  Gower  wrote, 
but  undoubtedly  indicates  the  name  he  had  in  mind.  In 
all  the  explanations,  a  mistake  of  /  for  r  is  taken  for 
granted. 


(109) 


XII 
WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

While  accusing  Wolfram  of  mystification, 
we  may  also  record  the  same  charge  against 
Wagner.  But  in  his  case  the  result  is  really 
to  enrich  the  story.  Following  certain  Orien- 
talists of  dubious  authority,  Wagner  changed 
the  name  Perceval  or  Parzival  into  Parsifal,  as 
if  equivalent  to  a  hypothetical  Arabic  phrase, 
Parsi  Fal,  to  which  is  attributed  the  mean- 
ing, Pure  Fool.  That  no  such  Arabic  phrase 
exists  is  a  matter  of  indifference,  if  it  be  con- 
ventionally understood  that  the  name  of  the 
hero  indicates  his  character  and  is  in  harmony 
with  his  story.  It  is  possible  that  Perceval  is 
nothing  more  profound  or  far-fetched  than 
Pers,  Piers,  Pierse,  Pierce,  Perz,  Peter,  of  the 
Vale.  Peter  was  in  former  times  a  common 
name  in  literature  for  the  honest,  guileless, 
(no) 


WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

simple-minded  man,  as  in  William  Langland's 
Vision  of  Piers  the  Plowman,  and  in  folk-lore 
generally  *  for  the  simpleton,  the  fool  of  the 
family,  or  the  male  character  corresponding 
to  the  female  Cinderella.  This  is  so  well 
known  that  a  distinguished  English  novel- 
ist has  given  his  hero  the  name  of  Peter 
Simple,  and  has  literally  developed  his  elab- 
orate fiction  along  the  familiar  lines  of  the 
childish  marchen  about  the  boy  apparently 
stupid,  who  becomes  a  man  honored  and 
powerful  and  of  high  rank.  If  into  this  fool- 
ish Piers  of  the  Vale  can  be  read  not  merely 
the  myth  of  the  Celtic  Peredur2  and  the  story 


1.  St.    Peter   himself   figures    in   the    folk-lore    of 
various  nations  as  a  foolish  but  honest  character.     See 
CRANE,  The  Exempla  of  Jacques  de  Vitry,  p.  157.,  BUSK, 
Roman  Legends,  p.  173  seq.,  and  many  other  collections. 

2.  The  characteristics  of  the  mythical  Peredur  that 
are  reproduced  in  the  romantic  Perceval  are  not  to  be 
ignored.     But  they  do  not  indicate  a  legendary  origin 
for  Perceval,  any  more  than  a  similar  coincidence  in  the 
case  of  one  of  Scott's  heroes  would  prove  that  hero  to 
be  the  reminiscence  of  an  Ossianic  deity. 

(ill) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

of  the  politics  and  religion  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, but  also  the  history  of  Buddha  and  the 
symbolic  allegory  of  Mara,3  so  much  the  bet- 
ter. But  there  is  no  use  of  stumbling  over 
etymologies  that  are  right  under  foot,  in  the 
search  for  something  remote  and  wonderful. 
That  is  too  much  like  a  renewal  of  the  quest 
for  the  holy  graal. 

Wagner's  acceptance  of  the  rash  Arabic 
definition  of  his  hero's  name  and  the  happy 
fitness  of  the  blunder  merely  illustrate  anew 
how  certain  cycles  of  European  tales  absorb 
Orientalism,  real  or  pretended,  as  a  sponge 
takes  up  water.  Nothing  can  be  more  ger- 
mane to  the  tale  of  Parsifal,  as  Wagner  has 
recast  it,  than  the  admirable  incident  of  the 
suspended  spear  or  the  chorus  of  magical 
flower  maidens.  But  if  any  future  Celtic  en- 
thusiast attempts  to  account  for  these  things 
with  stories  from  Brittany  or  Wales,  he  will 


3.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XIX.,  p.  147  seq. 
(112) 


WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

simply    be    buried    under    an    avalanche    of 
Buddhist  literature. 

Wagner  is  supposed  to  have  got  his  mag- 
ical machinery  in  this  case  from  the  perusal  of 
some  Oriental  translations  by  Burnouf.  But 
he  only  followed  the  example  of  many  in  past 
times.  As  was  long  ago  pointed  out,  Wolf- 
ram's poem  was  surcharged  with  Eastern  lore. 
"  The  scene,  for  the  most  part,"  wrote  Price, 
"  is  not  only  laid  in  the  East,  but  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  names  are  of  decidedly  Oriental 
origin.  The  Saracens  are  always  spoken  of 
with  consideration;  Christian  knights  unhesi-- 
tatingly  enrol  themselves  under  the  banner  of 
the  Caliph;  no  trace  of  religious  animosities 
is  to  be  found  between  the  followers  of  the 
Crescent  and  the  Cross;  and  the  Arabic  appel- 
lations of  the  seven  planets  are  thus  distinctly 
enumerated:  Zwal  (Zuhael),  Saturn;  Musteri, 
Jupiter;  Muret  (Meryt),  Mars;  Samsi  (Shems), 
the  Sun;  Alligasir,  Venus;  Kitr  (Kidr),  Mer- 

(113) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

cury;  Kamer  (Kaemer),  the  Moon."4  A 
subsequent  reaction  against  this  tolerance  is 
alleged  in  the  case  of  Albrecht  von  Scharfen- 
berg's 5  completed  poem  of  Titurel,  begun 
by  Wolfram.  Yet  in  spite  of  his  fanaticism, 
Albrecht  wrote  a  poem  saturated  with  Ori- 
ental ideas  and  dotted  with  Oriental  names, 
his  age  being  replete  with  travelers'  tales,  and 
in  particular  with  fictions  about  Prester  John, 
whom  Wolfram  had  already  involved  in  the 
all-embracing  net  of  the  graal  romance. 

The  same  tendency  to  gather  fantasies 
from  the  East  was  shown  in  the  cycle  of 
Charlemagne,  in  the  legend  of  Dietrich  of 
Berne,  in  that  of  Virgil,  and  subsequently  in 
that  of  Faust.  On  this  purely  incidental  but 
ever-recurring  vagary  of  the  European  imagi- 
nation, Warton  built  his  theory  of  the  Arabian 
origin  of  romance,  a  structure  as  unsubstan- 


4.  HAZIJTT'S  WARTON,  I.,  p.  50  seq. 

5.  BERGMANN,  San  Greal,  p.  56  seq. 

(114) 


WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

tial  as  its  foundation  was  insecure.  The  East- 
ward look  of  the  Western  myth-maker  was  as 
characteristic  of  Plato  with  his  Er  of  Arme- 
nia, as  with  any  later  story-teller,  and  no  age 
since  has  neglected  it  down  to  the  date  of 
Madame  Blavatsky's  rides  on  elephants  with 
impossible  tails  in  search  of  Tibetan  mahat- 
mas  that  never  existed.  Nor  will  it  ever  be 
forgotten. 

To  the  inquiry  why  little  or  nothing  is  said 
of  the  contributions  to  Arthurian  romance, 
particularly  to  the  graal  department  of  the 
cycle,  between  the  age  of  Wolfram  and  that 
of  Wagner,  the  answer  must  be  that  the  cre- 
ative impulse  was  rarely  shown  in  the  interval. 
The  Arthurian  motives  gathered  an  indiscrim- 
inate mass  of  popular  tradition  as  they  devel- 
oped, but  this  tradition  was  only  a  new  ver- 
sion of  tales  familiar  in  other  forms.  It  adds 
nothing  to  the  story  of  Sleeping  Beauty  to 
figure  as  the  object  of  a  quest  by  the  knight- 

(115) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

hood  of  the  Round  Table.  The  facility  with 
which  the  later  Arthurian  romancers  grabbed 
everything  in  sight  can  be  illustrated  from 
Dr.  Evans's  book,6  which  has  recently  been 
issued  in  the  United  States  after  some  years 
of  publicity  in  England.  In  the  first  place, 
the  narrative  is  given  under  the  form  of  a 
vision.  Vision  literature  was  sporadically 
more  or  less  frequent  from  early  Christian 
times  until  the  close  of  the  mediaeval  period; 
but  it  became  a  prevalent  form  of  story- 
writing  with  the  appearance  of  the  Apocalypse 
of  Paul  in  the  West,  and  the  production  of 
elaborate  tales  —  the  Vision  of  Tnugdalus, 
1150  or  later,  St.  Patrick's  Purgatory,  about 
1 180,  and  Godcschalk's  Vision,  which  pretends 
to  the  date  of  1188.  Again,  the  concluding 
portion  of  Perceval's  adventures  in  this  book 


6.  EVANS,  The  High  History  of  the  Holy  Graal. 
This  is  a  translation  of  a  French  romance  which  Dr. 
Evans  seems  to  date  earliest  of  all  fiction  in  which 
Perceval  figures. 

(116) 


WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

is  related  in  the  manner  of  an  Irish  Voyage. 
Tales  of  this  kind  began  to  filter  into  the  gen- 
eral literature  of  Europe  about  the  same  time, 
roughly  speaking,  as  the  visions  already  men- 
tioned. Finally  Virgil  figures  in  this  romance 
precisely  as  he  does  in  L'Image  du  Monde  and 
other  thirteenth  century  tales  of  wonder,  and 
much  more  definitely  than  in  Wolfram's 
poem.  Thus  most  of  the  fictional  activities 
of  the  first  half  of  the  thirteenth  century  are 
summarized  under  a  theme  originally  foreign 
to  them.  From  one  case  infer  the  rest. 

The  book  that  goes  by  the  name  of  Sir 
Thomas  Malory  is  merely  an  adequate  con- 
spectus of  a  vast  body  of  previous  literature. 
As  between  Tennyson  and  Wagner,  it  may 
be  said  that  the  former  turned  the  old  tales 
into  genuine  poetry,  something  which  few  im- 
partial critics  would  claim  for  Wagner.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  whole  spirit  of  Tennyson 
is  modern.  Compared  with  the  ancient  tales 

(117) 


THE  GRAAL  PROBLEM 

.his  work  is  an  anachronism,  while  Wagner 
is  properly  mediaeval.  In  both  there  is  a 
recrudescence  of  the  earliest  motives  of  the 
fiction,  but  in  very  diverse  ways.  As  Map 
had  used  the  tales  to  glorify  English  royalty 
in  the  twelfth  century,  so  Tennyson  used 
them  for  a  similar  purpose  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  As  Map  had  gone  to  the  verge  of 
blasphemy  in  giving  to  his  Sir  Galahad  the 
characteristics  of  Jesus  Christ,  so  Wagner  has 
done  the  same  thing  with  his  Parsifal.  Those 
who  condemn  him  for  this  should  remember 
that  he  is  absolutely  faithful  to  tradition. 
From  the  mediaeval  point  of  view,  whatever 
may  be  said  in  censure,  he  is  seen  to  be  the 
first  legitimate  successor  of  Wolfram. 

Though,  as  has  been  said,  Wagner  seems 
at  times  to  fall  short  of  the  best  thought  of 
the  great  thirteenth  century  poet,  he  still 
has  the  advantage  of  an  age  cultured  to  a 
degree  capable  of  reading  all  past  poetical  or 

(118) 


WAGNER'S  ORIENTALISM 

romantic  achievement  into  his  lines.  By  a 
supremely  skillful  use  of  his  transcendent 
powers  as  a  dramatist,  a  musician  and  a 
master  of  the  resources  of  the  stage,  he  has 
placed  the  ancient  tale  into  a  form  and  a  sit- 
uation where  it  must  be  vitally  attractive  to 
many  a  future  generation.  It  is  worth  while 
to  observe,  finally,  how  much  better  the  world 
is  off  for  the  materials  required  in  the  study 
of  this  drama  than  for  those  used  in  any  work 
by  any  great  dramatist  of  the  past.  That  is 
an  improvement  in  the  conditions  of  human 
thought  for  which  the  man  of  letters  can  not 
be  too  thankful. 


(119) 


INDEX 


Abbey,  mural  paintings  of,  2. 

Aberce,  St.,  exorcism  of,  86. 

Adrian  IV.,  pope,  44. 

Albigenses,  50. 

Albert,  Prince  Consort,  7,  8. 

Albrecht  von  Scharfenburg,  114. 

Allhamdolillah,  97. 

Alkendi,  106. 

Alexander  II.,  pope,  39. 

Alexandre,  Noel,  church  history  of,  50,  52,  54. 

Allah,  97. 

Almaricans,  50. 

Amfortas,  82. 

Anastasius,  Byzantine  Emperor,  13. 

Ancient  Mariner,  the,  79,  80. 

Anecdota  Graeca,  cited,  86. 

Anjou,  18,  24,  ss,  93,  105. 

Antioch,  sacred  lance  found  at,  91,  92. 

Apocrypha,  relation  of,  to  the  graal  story,  73. 

Apostolians,  50. 

Aquinas,  St.  Thomas,  76. 

Arimathea,  Joseph  of,  95. 

Arnaldists,  50. 

(121) 


INDEX 


Arthur,  7,  10,  12,  14,  15,  16,  17,  23,  24,  27,  28,  31,  37,  39, 

40,  41,  57,  69,  70,  75,  76,  77,  87. 

Arthurian  romance,  etc.,  v.,  9,  38,  39,  45,  73,  75,  85,  115. 
Aryan  Exposure  and  Return  Formula,  69. 
.Asceticism,    Schopenhauer's   opinion  of,   6;   in   Arthur 

romances,  40. 
Athanasius,  cited.  86. 
Athenaeus,  quoted,  13. 
Baptism,  in  Wolfram's  poem,  76,  103. 
Barlaam  and  Josaphat,  romance  of,  quoted,  86. 
Bartsch,  text  of  Wolfram's  poem  edited  by,  103. 
Battle  Abbey,  papal  interference  with,  44. 
Becket,  affair  of.  44. 
Beowulf,  date  of,  17. 
Berengar  of  Tours,  51,  52,  53,  54,  93. 
Bergmann,  cited,  2,  114. 
Berne,  fraudulent  miracles  at,  63. 
Birch-Hirschfeld,  cited,  I. 
Bismarck,  allusion  to  Canossa  by,  39. 
Bismillah,  97. 
Blavatsky,  115. 
Bodo,  cited,  91. 
Bogomils,  50. 

Bohemia,  eucharistic  changes  resented  in,  90. 
Boissonade,  quoted,  86,  98. 
Borron,  Robert  de,  67,  68,  71. 
Bors,  58,  78. 
Breton  lore,  16. 
Britain,  10.  18. 
British  church,  42;   material    of    Arthur    romance,    18; 

round    table,    15;  bards,  16. 
Brittany,  14,  31,  112. 

(  122) 


INDEX 

Bryce,  cited,  25,  39. 

Buddha,  112. 

Bunyan,  85. 

Burney,  History  of  Music,  cited,  38. 

Burnouf,  113. 

Busk,  cited,  in. 

Butler,  satire  on  Duns  Scotus,  62. 

Calenius,  Walter,  16. 

Campbell,  cited,  31. 

Canossa,  39. 

Carlyle,  cited,  8. 

Cassiodorus,  quoted,  13. 

Cathari,  50. 

Catholicism,  criticised  by  Schopenhauer,  6. 

Catino,  90,  92. 

Catinus,  92. 

Celibacy,   Schopenhauer's  opinion  of,  6;   of  the  clergy 

in  the  twelfth  century,  40. 
Celis,  lapis  ex,  97. 
Celts,  habits  of,  at  feasts,  13. 
Charlemagne,  9,  15,  21,  24,  37,  42,  114. 
Chevalier  au  Lion,  68. 
Chrestien  de  Troyes,  6,  7,  68,  71,  81,  82. 
Chronicon  de  Bello,  cited,  44,  106. 
Clouston,  cited,  i. 
Coleridge,  79,  80,  81. 
Compilatio  Chronologica,  cited,  91. 
Constantine,  90,  91. 
Constantinople,  10. 
Copland,  Robert,  26. 
Cox,  Sir  George,  cited,  i,  31. 
Crane,  cited,  in. 

(123) 


INDEX 

Cross,  sign  of  the,  in  legend,  86. 
Dante,  36,  46. 
Dares,  69,  109. 
Dictys,  69. 

Death  of  Arthur,  71. 
Denmark,  Knights  of,  59. 
De  Nugis  Curialium,  quoted,  12,  55,  56,  74. 
Dietrich  of  Berne,  1 14. 
Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  48. 
Ditmarus,  quoted,  1 1 ;  cited,  91. 
Divina  Commedia,  36. 
Dolopathos,  quoted,  34. 
Dominic,  St.,  order  of,  62. 
Dunlop,  cited,  8,  38,  70,  99. 
Duns  Scotus,  62. 

East,  attention  of  Europe  directed  to  the,  by  the  Cru- 
sades, 32. 

Education  in  the  twelfth  century,  36. 
Edward,  Duke  of  Buckingham,  26. 
Edward  the  Confessor,  14. 
Elaine,  29. 
Eleanor,  29. 

Eliazar,  character  in  graal  romance,  58. 
Elijah,  relation  of,  to  Galaad,  35. 
England,  18,  24,  37,  44,  55,  57,  79,  95,  105. 
Erdmann,  quoted,  5,  52 ;  cited,  46,  49. 
Erigena,  John,  49. 
Er  of  Armenia,  115. 

Eucharist,  controversy  respecting  the,  50,  51,  96. 
Euchologion,  quoted,  48,  98. 
Eusebius,  bishop  of  Anjou,  54. 
Evans,  Sebastian,  cited,  116. 

(124) 


INDEX 

Fabricius,  cited,  23,  32,  107. 

Faust,  114. 

Felekhe-Daneh,  105. 

Finck,  cited,  4,  12. 

Fish,  in  Mohammedan  tradition  and  Christian  usage,  34. 

Fisher-King,  the,  81. 

Fiske,  cited,  I. 

Flegetanis,  102,  104,  105,  108. 

Forcellini,  cited,  92. 

France,  19,  37,  77. 

Francis,  St.,  order  of,  62. 

Franciscans,  62. 

Prankish  form  of  Arthur  romances,  18. 

French  language,  the,  18,  37. 

Friars,  victory  of,  over  the  universities,  62. 

Fulk  the  Fourth,  Count  of  Anjou,  53. 

Gab,  Teutonic  improvisation,  28. 

Galaad,  meaning  of,  in  mediaeval  Latin  and  French,  35. 

Galahad,  29,  35,  58,  77,  78,  118. 

Gandulfians,  50. 

Gast,  Lucas  de,  71. 

Gaul,  Knights  of,  58. 

Gawain,  77,  84,  85. 

Gelasius  I.,  pope,  43. 

Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  9,  16,  21. 

Germany,  37,  75. 

Gervase  of  Tilbury,  theory  of,  as  to  Church  and  State,  45. 

Gilead,  English  form  of  Galaad,  35. 

Giraldus  Cambrensis,  72. 

Glastonbury,  15. 

Godeschalk,  vision  of,  116. 

Godfrey  of  Bullogne,  26. 

(125) 


INDEX 

Godfrey  of  Viterbo,  cited,  69,  91 ;  quoted.  35. 

Gorres,  cited,  99,  105. 

Goethe,  influence  of,  on  Scott,  8. 

Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  8. 

Goths,  Byzantine  customs  among  the,  14. 

Gottlieb  of  Strasburg,  101. 

Gower,  quoted,  108. 

Guat,  possible  abbreviation  of  Gautier,  67. 

Guinevere,  tomb  of,  15. 

Guy,  Guyot,  conjectural  readings  for  Kyot,  65. 

Gyat,  possible  abbreviation  of  Gautier,  67. 

Graal,  v.,  2,  3,  23,  28,  30,  33,  35,  39,  43,  48,  58,  62,  64,  65, 

71,  73,  81,  85,  89,  90,  91,  93,  94,  104,  112,  116. 
Gradale,  93. 
Grail,  v.,  93. 
Greal,  93. 

Gregory  VII.,  pope,  39,  40,  41,  54,  62. 
Griffith  ap  Arthur,  Welsh  name  of  Geoffrey  of  Mon- 

mouth,  21. 
Gurnemanz,  80,  87. 
Hagen,  cited,  i. 
Hahn,  formula  of,  69. 
Hallam,  quoted,  25,  26. 

Hastings,  Song  of  Roland  at  the  battle  of,  38. 
Heinzel,  cited,  2. 
Helias,  Knight  of  the  Swan,  26. 
Helinandus,  quoted,  94. 
Henricians,  50. 
Henry  the  Fowler,  90. 
Henry  the  Second,  19,  20,  21,  22,  25,  28,  41,  44,  45,  54, 

55,  56,  68,  91. 

Henry,  son  of  Henry  the  Second,  22,  28,  29. 
(126) 


INDEX 

Herbart,  5. 

Herbers,  quoted,  34. 

Hermannus  Contractus,  cited,  91. 

Herodias,  87. 

Holy  Church,  use  of  the  phrase,  in  romances,  42. 

Homer,  69. 

Hospitallers,  62. 

Hudibras,  cited,  62. 

Hueffer,  quoted,  65. 

Huet,  bishop  of  Avranches,  cited,  32;  quoted,  118. 

Hume,  cited,  55. 

Idylls  of  the  King,  quoted,  7,  8. 

Innocent  III.,  Pope,  40,  62,  76. 

Ireland,  59,  105. 

Irish  Voyages,  37,  117. 

Isidore,  cited,  92. 

Italy,  14. 

Jean  de  Hauteselve,  cited,  34. 

John  of  Damascus,  48,  63. 

John  Erigena,  48,  49. 

John  of  Salisbury,  68. 

Joseph  of  Arimathea,  95,  99. 

Joseph  of  Exeter,  quoted,  30 ;  cited,  69. 

Joseph,  character  in  graal  romance,  60. 

Jusserand,  cited,  27. 

Justinian,  14. 

Ketines,  a  blunder  of  significance  in  graal  romance,  107. 

Kiss,  The  incident  of  the,  in  the  French  Perceval,  83. 

Klingsor,  84,  85,  86. 

Knight  of  the  Swan,  26. 

Koran,  32,  33,  97,  106. 

Kraussold,  cited,  2. 

(127) 


INDEX 

Krehbiel,  cited,  4. 
Kundry,  87. 

Kyot,  65,  67,  100,  102,  105. 
Aa/?/f,  97,  98. 
Lactantius,  quoted,  86. 
Lady  of  the  Lake,  29. 
Lance,  the  sacred,  90. 
Lancelot,  23,  29,  43,  71,  72,  73,  77,  78. 
Lanciani,  cited.  10. 

Lanfranc,  attitude  of,  in  the  Berengarian  controyersy,  53. 
Languedoil,  18,  66. 
Lapis  herilis,  97. 
Lapsit  exillis,  96. 
Last  Supper,  dish  used  at  the,  90. 
Latin,  in  the  twelfth  century,  18. 
Layamon,  translator  of  Geoffrey's  chronicle,  23. 
A^w,  98. 
Leibnitz,  cited,  n. 
Lichtenstein,  cited,  2. 
Liebrecht,  cited,  I. 
Leyser,  cited,  23. 
L'lmage  du  Monde,  117. 
Lincoln,  J.  L.,  82. 
Lipsius,  R.  A.,  cited,  85. 

Literature,  spread  of,  by  wandering  students,  36. 
Lohengrin,  26. 
Lollards,  50. 
Longinus,  60. 
Lucifer,  97. 
Mabinogion,  16. 
Mahatmas,  115. 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  2,  58,  117. 
(128) 


INDEX 

Mandeville,  Sir  John,  cited,  35. 

Map,  Walter,  12,  19,  23,  28,  56,  62,  65,  67,  68,  69,  71,  73, 
74.  "8. 

Mara,  112. 

Marie  de  France,  16. 

Mark,  St.,  quoted,  92. 

Master,  title  of,  in  the  twelfth  century,  72. 

Matilda,  Empress,  19,  29. 

Matthew,  St.,  quoted,  92. 

Matthew  Paris,  cited,  26. 

Maurice,  St.,  lance  of,  91. 

Media,  Sarras  a  fictitious  city  in,  35. 

Melanchthon,  preface  to  Koran  written  by,  32. 

Merlin,  23,  71. 

Michaud,  quoted,  32. 

Morhof,  cited,  32,  48. 

Morley,  Henry,  cited,  109. 

Mort  Artus,  72. 

Morte  d' Arthur,  8,  73. 

Neale,  cited,  98. 

Neo-Manichaeans,  50. 

Nicephorus  Chumnus,  quoted,  86. 

Nicodemus,  Gospel  of,  43,  95. 

Nitze,  cited,  2. 

Normandy,  18,  24,  55,  93. 

Normans,  27. 

Northmen,  27. 

Nutt,  Alfred,  cited,  2,  9,  31. 

Ockam,  theory  of  as  to  Church  and  State,  76. 

Ockamists,  76. 

Orientalism  in  Western  romance,  112. 

Otia  Imperialia,  quoted,  46. 

(129) 


INDEX 

Otto  the  Third,  Emperor,  n,  15. 

Palestine,  95. 

Palmer,  quoted,  33.  ' 

Pampeluna,  106. 

Pannier,  cited,  81,  100. 

Pantheon,  cited,  35,  69. 

Papacy,  aspirations  of,  39. 

Parsi  Fal,  no. 

Parsifal,  i,  3,  5,  6,  7,  12,  79,  80,  85,  no,  112,  ii& 

Parzival,  77,  78,  81,  82,  84,  85,  87,  88,  98,  100,  no. 

Paschasius  Radbertus.  49. 

Paterini,  56. 

Paul,  Apocalypse  of,  95,  116. 

Pauli,  cited,  108. 

Paulicians,  50,  56. 

Paulin  Paris,  cited,  42,  72,  94. 

Pearson,  Karl,  quoted,  103. 

Pelleas,  character  in  Graal  romance,  58,  60. 

Perceval,  23,  26,  58,  67,  68,  69,  71,  83,  no,  in,  116. 

Percy,  Bishop,  quoted,  38. 

Peredur,  in. 

Pers,  Perz,  etc.,  no. 

Peter,  no,  in. 

Peter  the  Venerable,  32,  106. 

Petrobrussians,  50. 

Philip  Augustus,  67. 

Piers,  no. 

Pistorius,  cited,  35,  70. 

Pius  IX.,  Vatican  Council  in  the  time  of,  63. 

Planets,  Arabic  names  of,  in  Wolfram,  113. 

Plantagenet,  15,  24,  75. 

Plato,  115. 

(  130) 


INDEX 

Posidonius,  quoted,  13. 

Prester  John,  114. 

Price,  cited,  99,  101 ;  quoted,  113. 

Prose,  pretended  veracity  of,  70. 

Protestantism  criticised  by  Schopenhauer,  6. 

Provengal,  65. 

Provence,  tales  neglected  by,  37. 

Publicans,  56. 

Purgatory,  St.  Patrick's,  116. 

Quest  of  the  Graal,  71,  73. 

Quo  Vadis,  cited,  34. 

Radinges,  106. 

Ramsay,  Sir  J.  H.,  cited,  19. 

Rashdall,  quoted,  36;  cited,  63,  72. 

Reading,  106. 

Real  Presence,  76. 

Redulphus,  Archbishop  of  Tours,  54. 

Relandus,  quoted,  34. 

Renan,  4. 

Retines,  Robert  de,  106. 

Rhys,  cited,  2,  9,  31. 

Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  30,  67. 

Robin  Hood,  65. 

Roland,  Song  of,  38. 

Rome,  14,  21. 

Round  Table,  9,  15,  26,  116. 

Sacramentarians,  51,  93. 

Saladin,  30. 

San  Greal,  60,  93. 

Saracen,  34,  113. 

Sarras,  34,  60. 

Sathas,  quoted,  14. 

(131) 


INDEX 

Saxons,  24. 

Schaff,  quoted,  47. 

Schopenhauer,  5,  6,  79. 

Scinderesis,  100. 

Scodella,  94. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  2,  3,  8,  in. 

Scutella,  94. 

Sigebert,  cited,  91. 

Sigma,  name  of  crescent-shaped  table,  10. 

Simon  Magus,  87. 

Sleeping  Beauty,  115. 

Spanheim,  cited,  48. 

Spear,  the  bleeding,  60. 

Spiritual  power,  conflict  of,  with  temporal,  76. 

Statwerch,  Johann,  cited,  91. 

Stephen,  King.  19,  29. 

Strauss,  4, 

Struvius,  cited,  35,  70. 

Students,  wanderings  of,  36. 

Swabia,  exchange  of,  for  a  holy  lance,  90. 

Tables,  of  mediaeval  and  ancient  times,  n,  12,  15. 

Taillefer,  minstrel,  38. 

Tanchelinians,  50. 

Tanner,  cited,  107. 

Templars,  26,  28,  62,  99. 

Templeis,  96. 

Temporal  power,  conflict  of,  with  spiritual,  76. 

Tennyson,  vi.,  2,  78,  117,  118. 

Teutonic  hero  tales,  18;  form  of  Arthur  romances,  17. 

Thatcher,  cited,  21. 

Theodoric,  King  of  the  Goths  in  Italy,  13. 

Thomists,  76. 

(132) 


INDEX 

Thorns,  cited,  27. 

Tischendorf,  cited,  43. 

Titurel,  114. 

Tnugdalus,  vision  of,  116. 

Toledo,  the  home  of  magic,  100. 

Transubstantiation,  importance  of  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, 57. 

Trevirenz,  87. 

Triclinium  of  the  Romans,  9,  10. 

Tristan,  65,  71,  77,  100. 

Tryblion,  57,  92. 

Turpin,  pretended  chronicle  of,  9. 

Uc  de  St.  Cyr,  troubadour,  77. 

Universities,  origin  of,  36. 

Veronica,  60,  95. 

Verse,  view  of,  in  the  middle  ages,  69. 

Virgil,  37,  114,  117. 

Visions,  literature  of,  36,  116. 

Vulgate,  quoted,  92. 

Wace,  translator  of  Geoffrey's  Chronicle,  23. 

Wagner,  vi.,  i,  3,  4,  5,  7,  12,  79,  80,  81,  82,  83,  85,  87,  88, 
89,  no,  112,  115,  117,  118. 

Waitz,  cited,  2. 

Waldenses,  50. 

Wales,  14,  15,  112. 

Wallingford,  treaty  of,  19. 

Walter  Calenius,  16. 

Warton,  cited,  9,  37,  97,  99,  101,  108,  114. 

Wechsler,  cited,  I,  2. 

Weston,  cited,  75. 

Wheatley,  editor  of  Percy's  Reliques,  cited,  38. 

William,  the  Conqueror,  53. 

(133) 


INDEX 

William  the  Third.  25. 

William  of  Apulia,  quoted,  40. 

William  of  Malmesbury,  quoted,  53. 

William  of  Ockam,  theory  of,  as  to  Church  and  State,  46. 

Wilson,  editor,  cited,  13,  32. 

Witch,  in  the  middle  ages,  88. 

Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,  65,  66,  71,  75,  76,  80,  81,  82, 

84,  87,  88,  89,  96,  97,  99,  loo,  102,  105,  113,  114,  115, 

117,  118. 
Wright,  I,  12,  23,  71,  72,  107. 


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